Posted in: Audio Dramas, BBC, TV | Tagged: alfred hitchcock, the film

The Film: BBC Radio 4 Dramatises The Story of Hitchcock's Lost Film

The Film is a BBC Radio 4 audio drama about the true story of Alfred Hitchcock's lost documentary about the Holocaust at the end of WWII.

The name Alfred Hitchcock is synonymous with the suspense movie. He is considered one of the greatest, if not the greatest, directors of crime and suspense movies of all time. Now BBC Radio 4 has released an audio drama called The Film, which tells the true story of how his friend, the screenwriter Sidney Bernstein, implored him to help create a documentary on the Belsen concentration camp. The footage was one of the filmed documents of the Holocaust and the horrific extermination of Jewish people by the Nazis. The government eventually suppressed the film for political reasons, and it remained lost until its restoration only a few years ago. The audio drama is a beautifully-written and heartbreaking telling of the true story that is now more relevant than ever due to current events, and also an examination of filmmaking, truth, documentary, storytelling, and a deconstruction of Hitchcock the man and the filmmaker, including the problematic parts of his personality (namely his tendency to sexually harass the actresses in his movies during production).

"The Film" by Martin Jameson – Hitchcock's Reluctant Mission

April 1945. A Ministry of Information army film crew enters Bergen-Belsen to record the unimaginable horrors of the Holocaust that many were already refusing to believe. But faced with all this footage, the head of the unit, Sidney Bernstein, is overwhelmed. He needs to get a film out there as soon as possible, but how can he do justice to such suffering? So he summons his friend Alfred Hitchcock from Hollywood. Bernstein, who later established Granada Television, determined that together they could create an irrefutable cinematic testimony.

Sidney Bernstein – Henry Goodman, Alfred Hitchcock – Jeremy Swift, Richard Crossman – Geoffrey Streatfeild, Mrs Haig – Fenella Woolgar, Secretary – Hamilton Berstock. Production Co-ordinator – Vicky Moseley, Sound Design – Sharon Hughes, Technical Producer – Peter Ringrose, Studio Manager – Alison Craig, and Producer/ Director – Gary Brown.

A BBC Studios Audio Production for Radio 4. Documentary filmmaker Jane Wells, daughter of Sidney Bernstein, assisted with the research for this drama. The Film is streaming as part of the BBC Drama of the Week series on major podcast outlets.

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