Charles Laughton Wrath" (US title "The Beachcomber") (1938), based on a story by W. Somerset Maugham, in which his wife, Elsa Lanchester, co-starred; "St. Martin's Lane" (US title "Sidewalks of London"), about London street entertainers, which featured Vivien Leigh and Rex Harrison; and "Jamaica Inn", with Maureen O'Hara and Robert Newton, about Cornish shipwreckers, based on Daphne du Maurier's novel, and the last film Alfred Hitchcock directed in Britain before moving to Hollywood in the late 1930s. The films produced were not commercially successful enough, and the company was saved from bankruptcy only when RKO Pictures offered Laughton the title role (Quasimodo)
The World of Alfred Hitchcock The World of Alfred Hitchcock In the setting of his office at Universal Studios, Alfred Hitchcock shares his vision of what an artistic film should be in the framework of a commercial industry, the difference between suspense films and mystery films, his conception of eroticism and his vision of Scandinavian women. He also explains in details how he created the suspense in the famous sequence of North by Northwest in the corn field. The film contains an original interview with Bruce Dern, who describes Hitchcock’s method as a director, and film clips from North by Northwest, Frenzy, Topaz, and Family