YOU might imagine John Williams was the last composer to score an Alfred Hitchcock film, with his music to the director’s final movie, Family Plot, in 1976.

But last year the British Film Institute unveiled Hitchcock’s surviving silent movies, thoroughly restored, with newly commissioned scores, as part of the London 2012 Festival.

Thanks to Bournemouth’s Arts by the Sea Festival, the director’s first film, The Pleasure Garden, came to Bournemouth’s Pier Theatre with Daniel Patrick Cohen’s music performed live.

It’s a romantic story about two chorus girls and their contrasting fortunes in careers and love, but in the closing reels, it becomes a full-on melodrama with some great directorial flourishes.

Cohen’s score was perfectly judged – often amplifying what was on the screen, sometimes counterpointing it, never overwhelming the action.

We in the audience could only imagine the skill demanded of conductor Chris Austin and the orchestra led by Jack Maguire as they delivered music perfectly synchronised to the action. And as the film reached its wildly stylised climax, the music helped ensure that this 88-year-old wordless movie was as intensely gripping as many a later Hitchcock thriller.