Blackmail

Britain's first talkie, the 1929 "Blackmail," is directed by Alfred Hitchock, and even back then, it has many of his touches. The stars are Anny Ondra, Cyril Ritchard, John Longden, and Sara Allgood.

A young woman (Ondra) two-times her Scotland Yard inspector boyfriend (Longden) and goes out with an artist (Ritchard). Things get rough in his apartment, and he forces himself on her.

She kills him (a la Dial M for Murder). Her boyfriend finds her glove in the apartment and realizes she did it; the other glove was found by a criminal hanging around the artist's apartment building, and he decides to blackmail the inspector.

Hitchcock more than appears in this film; he has a bit with a little boy on a subway. The film is strange in that the beginning is silent with no title cards. Then suddenly, there is sound.

It moves quite slowly, with not much in the way of action. The story builds slowly, and the scene in the artist's apartment is quite long before anything happens.

Nevertheless, the Hitchcock touches are there. A pivotal scene happens at the British Museum - Hitchcock's upheaval in familiar places. And in the jail scene, there's a sound the director often described as being terrifying in his childhood when his father had the local police teach him a lesson - the jail door closing.

The very pretty Ondra, wife of boxer Max Schmelling, is dubbed here. Ritchard in 1929 is not recognizable as Captain Hook.

Worth seeing - it's early Hitchcock and it's an 80-year-old movie. Mind-boggling.

A nice thriller with typical Hitch themes that remains famous thanks to a messy , complex story of attempted rape , killing in self-defense , blackmail , pursuit to death and look for Alfred's screen cameo . It is set in London , later a bitter discussion among lovers , the beautiful vendor Alice White (Amy Ondra , voice by Joan Barry) , sneaks away from her boyfriend and good-looking, efficient and impersonal Scotland Yard police , Frank Webber (John Longden) , to go out on an ill-advised date with the sleazy artist , Mr Crewe (Cyril Ritchard) . However, as the naive girl is lured into Crewe's studio, his sinister sexual advances will soon arm Alice's hand with a serrated bread knife, and before she knows it, the man lies dead in a pool of blood. As the saleswoman Alice getaways the scene of the crime in a numb haze , while the news of the unknown killer is spreading like wildfire all the way up to fiancé Frank's ears . Then Frank elides into a messy , personal story full of turns and while he attempts to keep his girlfriend from being involved .

An early talkie with script by Charles Bennett and Hitchcock himself , as usual , including a lot of sequences that remain genuinely amazing and striking . The dark atmosphere reeks with the feeling something nasty is going to happen any second . Britain's first period directed by Hitchcock who makes his ordinary small appearance on a tube train . It follows the police investigation of a murder with several twists and turns , while an invisible eyewitness will become a ruthless blackmailer . One of the first and best Alfred film to explore the ideas and themes that would become his trademarks , including climatic and memorable scenes . Future successful filmmakers Michael Powell and Ronald Neame were stills cameraman and clapper boy respectively .

The motion picture was well realized by Alfred Hitchcock , his first sound film for Great Britain . Being made as a silent movie , this was an early talkie , and still stunningly hypnotic to see today . In fact , being , nowadays ,more stimulating for its innovations in that area , and by experimenting with a peculiar narrative structure . This fine early effort by Hitch has several novelties , as the movie transcends the limitation of its mystery plot by dealing with thought-provoking issues and focusing on the theatrical meditations of reality . Here Alfred gives signs to be an expertise at tightening tension was already building up . The film belongs to Hitch's first British period when he directed silent films such as ¨The lodger¨ (1926) , ¨The ring¨(1927) , ¨Easy virtue¨ (1927) , ¨The Manxman¨(29) ; being ¨Blackmail¨(29) made as a silent , this was reworked to become a talkie . Following sound movies and early talkies as ¨Murder¨(1930 , ¨June and the Paycock¨(30) , ¨Skin Game¨(31) , ¨Rich and strange¨(32) , ¨Number 17¨(32) , ¨The man who knew too much¨(34) , ¨The 39 steps¨ (35) , ¨The secret agent¨(36) , ¨Sabotage¨(36) , ¨The lady vanishes¨(38) , ¨Jamaica Inn¨ (39) until he is hired by David O'Selznick to shoot¨Rebecca¨(40) in the US .

The film incorporates some of German Expressionism which was really obvious in the film. The beginning of the movie itself shows this through the use of lighting and shadows. A recurring theme is the framing of the face with a dark surround, and light shining only on the eyes. This creates a very intense and eerie sort of mood, which consolidate the theme of Expressionism.

The acting is pretty good and both Anny Ondra and John Longden did well. Ondra greatly showed the expressions of a person recently exposed to trauma, and the close-ups of her occupied and fearful expressions emphasize her guilt. Longden first starts off as a pre- occupied character who doesn't pay much attention to Alice, but after the murder he becomes more concerned and does his best to keep her from confessing. I find it interesting that the film goes about different ways to silence Alice. She is never given a chance to tell her story, and hardly gets any input.

The story was average for me, but I guess for that time period it could have been engaging. I felt that it lacked motivation on the part of the blackmailer (Donald Calthrop) and that his character just popped up so suddenly.

The cinematography however was pretty creative. As mentioned before, there was some Expressionistic styles used in the film, and camera placements helped with that. Also, the beginning scene had a really great shot from a mirror that showed a criminal's point of view.

I watched the version of this film with sound recorded, and it was pretty ingenious how sound was synchronized. The voice of Alice is from another actress, and Ondra was miming the words in the film. Though the sound at the beginning of the film is inconsistent and very much like a silent film, it got better throughout the film. Noticeably there was use of ambient noise as well as back shots of characters to eliminate sound synchronization problems. The use of sound to enhance Alice's subjective perception was also a great addition. A obvious example of this is when the neighbour starts gossiping and all Alice hears is "knife blah blah blah knife! blah blah knife!" That was pretty comedic (and annoying after awhile) but could be related to how Alice was hearing things.

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One of Hitchcock's early films, it was one of the first films to come out of England with sound during the end of the silent film era. An interesting film, we see several great shots of dolly's with the early staircase scene. Several well shot montages with wonderful dissolves and sound bridges. For 1929, Hitchcock shows the world with the film that he's a talented film maker. A risky scene, the audience gets to watch the main actress of the film undress behind her curtains. While the murder is never seen, the provocative and private scene of her undressing is present. Another interesting note, the main character of the film is the murderer! Throughout the film, the audience judges whether or not she is an innocent murderer or a killer. Hitchcock makes an early name for himself with this film with toying with the audience throughout the suspense of the film.

A common motif in Alfred Hitchcock's movies is the guilty woman: "Blackmail", "Psycho" and "The Birds" are all prime examples. In "Blackmail", Alice White (Anny Ondra) goes home with an artist one night and he tries to rape her. She murders him, and from then on everything reminds her of it. The jester painting appears to be looking at her (or she at it?), a billboard looks like a knife, and a woman keeps uttering the word knife. But in the end, everything blows up in Alice's face.

Hitch was certainly showing his chops here. The camera angles, scenery, and other such things all combined to make what we would expect in a Hitchcock movie. I try to imagine being a moviegoer in 1929 watching "Blackmail" for the first time, wondering what Hitchcock's subsequent work would be like.