Dear colleagues:
The title "Woman Alone" seems to be the source of some confusion, at least in my mind, although there
may have been some method in the madness originally. Perhaps a historian of 1930s British cinema holds
the key.
Pre-history. Back in 1912 and 1917 in the US there had been two obscure films, each entitled "Woman
Alone," starring Mabel Trunnelle and Alice Brady, respectively. In 1934 in England, Brunel directed an
obscure film entitled "Menace" (starring Varconi), later re-titled "Sabotage." As obscure as the three films
seem to have been, it seems improbable they could have contributed to the following confusion.
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In 1936, after Hitchcock had directed an adapation of Maugham's "Ashenden" spy stories under the film
title "Secret Agent," Hitch went on to tackle Joseph Conrad's important story, "Secret Agent" (c. 1900-10),
whose setting was 20th-century London. But Hitch had just used up Conrad's own title on his prior
Maugham adaptation. Not surprisingly, a new title was devised, "Sabotage," to replace Conrad's literary
title. The resulting Hitchcock film emerged from Gaumont-British Studio in 1936, starring Sylvia Sydney
& Oskar Homolka, and under that film title "Sabotage" became part of the Hitchcock canon.
In that same year, 1936, the Russian-American couple, producer-director Eugene Frenke and actress
Anna Sten, came to the UK and filmed a drama set in pre-revolutionary Russia (1936, Garrett-Klement
Pictures [?], starring Sten & Henry Wilcoxon). This Sten vehicle, from a story by Fedor Otsep (Ozep), bore
clear resemblances to "Land in Captivity" ("Zemlya v plenu"), a 1928 Russian film starring Sten & written-
directed by Otsep. But Sten & Frenke's 1936 British film gained a completely new title. In fact, it gained
TWO new titles, one supposedly British and one supposedly American, "Woman Alone"and "Two Who
Dared." But which was the British title and which was the American is unclear -- sources seem to
contradict each other. Don't turn the page yet -- the plot thickens.
Both the above 1936 British films, Hitchcock's and Frenke's, were then imported to the USA, and, it would
appear, both underwent further title changes. Hitch's "Sabotage" supposedly was re-titled "Woman
Alone," for reasons that escape my understanding. Equally unfortunate, the Frenke-Sten film lost its
initial British title and acquired a new US title. (One of Frenke's titles was "Woman Alone," thus coinciding
with the US title of the Hitchcock film...)
Is some of the above muddle an artifact of confused historiography, i.e., was the 1936-37 reality not
that confused, after all? Perhaps later historians (myself first of all) have mixed things up and made the
original reality SEEM TO BE a Caligaresque nightmare? Or was the good German montebank of Robert
Wiene alive and well in London & New York in 1936-37...?
With considerable confusion,
Steven P Hill,
Cinema Studies & Slavic Langs.,
University of Illinois (USA).
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