In true "Master of Suspense" form, a previously unknown film by Alfred Hitchcock, believed to be the auteur's first, has emerged from obscurity to add a new twist to his body of work. 

The National Film Preservation Foundation and the New Zealand FilmArchive announced yesterday the discovery of a long lost 1923 feature, "The White Shadow," the oldest film in whichAlfred Hitchcock is credited, reports the Los Angeles Times. Hitchcock, who wasonly 24 at the time, took on the roles of writer, assistant director,editor, and production designer. Clive Brook starred opposite BettyCompson, who played dual roles as twin sisters one good, one evil. There's onecatch, adding to the discovery's intrigue: only the first 30 minutes of the film were found.

"What we aregetting is the missing link," said David Sterritt, chairman of theNational Society of Film Critics and author of "The Films of AlfredHitchcock," told the L.A. Times. "[Hitchcock] was a creative young man who hadalready done some writing. We know the kind of creative personality he had whenhe was young and we know a few years later he started directing movies himself.What we don't know is how these things were coalescing in hisimagination."

The movie wasfound in a collection of unidentified American nitrate prints that had been stored at the New Zealand archive since 1989, when a collector's son, a projectionist, had brought them there. They sat untouched foryears, mainly because the archive only had funding to restore films from NewZealand.

It was nitrate expertLeslie Lewis who made the discovery after noticing the film had been mislabeled "Twin Sisters." Surprised by the quality of the images, Lewispoked around. "I realized that this was more like a film that Hitchcockworked on," she told the L.A. Times. "I went to their archives the next day andused their research to pull out some contemporary reviews and summaries andconfirmed it was 'White Shadow'."

The Academy of Motion PictureArts and Sciences will "re-premiere" the film on September 22 at L.A.'s SamuelGoldwyn Theater.