Hitchcock's silent gems back on screen

They were films almost lost to time. Scratched, faded and in desperate need of repair after more than 87 years, director Alfred Hitchcock's silent movies could have disappeared and remained just a memory. But thanks to restoration work done by the British Film Institute, they are seeing a worldwide revival.

Over the next few months, six of the nine restored films, which have been on tour in cities from Rio de Janeiro to Shanghai, will be screening at the Hong Kong Film Archive in Sai Wan Ho as part of its "Restored Treasures" series.

"All of Hitchcock's obsessions were there from the beginning," said Robin Baker, head curator of the institute's National Archive, who flew in to inaugurate the show on the early work of the director whose name has become synonymous with suspense and thrillers.

The six movies to be shown - The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog, Downhill, The Ring, Champagne, The Manxman and Blackmail - were all filmed between 1926 and 1929, a time of great exploration for the film industry.

"Only 20 per cent of [British] films from the silent period survived," said Baker. "It's so important we show how film was then."

Hitchcock's love of movement, voyeurism, staircases, binoculars, sinister beverages, ominous angles and dirty jokes were all already manifest when he was in his late 20s.

Baker and his team restored and re-established more than nine million frames over four years. Spending more time than the director of Psycho (1960), and The Birds (1963) took to film the actual movies, Baker tried to get the films as close as possible to what audiences of the day would have seen.