RARE FIND: An early film by Alfred Hitchcock has been unearthed in New Zealand.

A rare early film from Alfred Hitchcock that was unearthed in New Zealand has been labelled "priceless" by historians of the suspense master.

The National Film Preservation Foundation and the New Zealand Film Archive found part of Alfred Hitchcock's 1923 film The White Shadow following an international search.

It is considered to be the earliest feature film for which the celebrated director is credited.

GOOD EVENING: A still from Alfred Hitchcock's The White Shadow, recently unearthed in New Zealand.

The lost film starred Betty Compson as twin sisters - one good, and the other "without a soul". Hitchcock, who was just 24 at the time, was the writer, assistant director, editor and production designer on the melodrama.

"This is him showing how multi-talented he was at a very young age,''said Frank Stark, head of the New Zealand archive.

"There were also stories the named director - Graham Cutts - of the film wasn't the greatest. To a large degree Hitchcock filled in the gaps, even took over you might say.

"So this is a really early sign of just how broadly skilled Hitchcock was. Hitchcock was famous, in his later films for having a meticulous control of all the detail, from the acting performance right down to the sets and costumes. I think it's an early sign of just how precocious he was."

The country's film archive announced today that the film turned up among a cache of unidentified American nitrate prints held in the archive for the last 23 years.

However, only the first three reels of the six-reel feature have been found and no other copy is known to exist. The surviving reels of Hitchcock's The White Shadow will be preserved at Park Road Post Production in Wellington.

New Zealand projectionist and collector Jack Murtagh is credited for salvaging the film, as well as other silent-era movies. After he died in 1989, the nitrate prints were sent to the Film Archive by his grandson, Tony Osborne.

"From boyhood, my grandfather was an avid collector - be it films, stamps, coins or whatever. He was known, internationally, as having one of the largest collection of cigarette cards and people would travel from all over the world to view his collection. Some would view him as rather eccentric.

"He would be quietly amused by all the attention now generated by these important film discoveries," said Osborne in a statement.

For fans of the master of suspense, it is a once in a lifetime discovery.

"This is one of the most significant developments in memory for scholars, critics, and admirers of Hitchcock's extraordinary body of work," said David Sterritt, Chairman of the National Society of Film Critics and author of The Films of Alfred Hitchcock.

"Hitchcock's own directorial debut came only two years later. These first three reels of The White Shadow - more than half the film - offer a priceless opportunity to study his visual and narrative ideas when they were first taking shape."

The White Shadow will have its "re-premiere" on September 22, at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Samuel Goldwyn Theatre in Los Angeles.

New Zealand will also screen the classic.

"We're still in early days of planning what we're going to do, but it will be shown here in New Zealand," said Stark

Hitchcock went on to direct classics like The 39 Steps, Dial M For Murder, Rear Window and To Catch a Thief.

He died in 1980, aged 80.

Other titles identified for preservation include the early technicolor film The Love Charm (1928), early narratives from pioneering woman directors Muriel Ostriche and Alice Guy, a 1920 dance demonstration by ballerina-choreographer Albertina Rasch, a tantalising fragment from the Keystone Kops' lost slapstick comedy In the Clutches of the Gang (1914) and a number of other shorts and newsreel stories long unavailable in the United States.

The "lost" films will be preserved over the next three years in partnership with the US National Film Preservation Foundation, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, George Eastman House, the Library of Congress, the Museum of Modern Art and UCLA Film & Television Archive and made available in the United States.