Move to America
Thanks to Hitchcock’s success in England, David Selznick from Hollywood reached out to him. By 1939, the director moved his family to California and started working on a new movie, “Rebecca” (1940). The movie went on to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Hitch didn’t exactly love America. However, he did enjoy the resources that were available to him in American Studios.
Film Stills of ‘Rebecca’ – Reginald Denny, Joan Fontaine, Alfred Hitchcock, Laurence Olivier, and Aubrey Smith. 1940. Photo By Snap/Shutterstock
In 1943, towards the end of World War II, the director went back to England and produced two movies in French for the Free French forces. Then, in 1945, he worked on a documentary about concentration camps. As you can imagine, the images were so shocking that it was shelved. In 1985, it was finally published as “Memory of the Camps.” It was re-released in 2014.