2016 Essays

Alma Reville

Morris, Nathalie

Best known as the wife and collaborator of Alfred Hitchcock, Alma Reville’s career as a screenwriter and editor has largely been overshadowed by that of her director husband. As Hitchcock was fond of pointing out, however, Reville entered the film industry long before he did and by the time they met in 1921, she was already an experienced editor, continuity supervisor, and director’s assistant (1995, 51). Around 1915, at the age of sixteen, Reville joined the London Film Company which was based near her family home in Twickenham. Starting out as a tea girl, she was soon promoted to the cutting room and within two years was working as an assistant to director Maurice Elvey, according to a 1925 article in The Picturegoer (48). In 1918, she took a role in Elvey’s The Life Story of David Lloyd George (Hitchcock O’Connell and Bouzereau 2003, 26-27). This experience may have briefly inspired her with the desire to become an actress but despite a fleeting cameo in The Lodger (1927), the remainder of her career was based behind, rather than in front of, the camera.