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Hitchcock's Blackmail might have been a total train wreck in the hands of a lesser talent. Instead, it is a remarkable piece of cinematic history, and still tremendously entertaining after 78 years. The film was partly shot when Hitchcock learned that he would have access to sound equipment. His female lead was a talented German silent picture actress, whose accent was too heavy for sound, so an off-camera reader had to be used, plus a decent amount of expensive film had already been used and had to be integrated into the 'talkie' as well.

All considered, the movie is probably the best example of the transition from these two cinematic paradigms that can be found.

The silent portion of the film establishes John Longden's character as a hard-nosed young Scotland Yard detective. Anny Ondra plays the lovely young lady who is engaged to him,and who soon becomes the center of our attention. One night after they argue over some petty matters, they part company and Anny meets up with a male artist friend, who, unbeknownst to her, is interested in more than just pleasant conversation. Frank (Longden) spots them leaving the restaurant and follows them for a while. The artist coaxes Alice (Ondra) up to his flat, and things take a sinister turn in short order.

Over the second half of the film, the plots unfolds, and the emotions and consciences of the protagonists are sorely tried.

What immediately blew my mind was what a great silent director Hitchcock was. Shouldn't have been too surprising since Hitchcock has always struck me as a master cinematographer. The first 20 minutes of the film are completely silent,and there are no interruptions from distracting story boards. Nevertheless, through incredible use of lighting, camera work, and evocative acting, you understand everything that is going on clearly, and are drawn straight into the edgy atmosphere so familiar to those who appreciate the work of this great director.

The acting is mostly very good. Only Longden sometimes seems to over or under-act his part, and Ondra is really wonderful all the way through. I was not surprised to learn of her lengthy and productive career both before and after this film and will now look for more of her work.It is also interesting to see how the actors adapted so readily to the new medium. Although some have said that the sound portion of this film seemed over-acted because the actors were still clinging to silent film conventions, I really can not agree. Some of the characters (Alice, for example) required very evocative, rather physical performances, and I can't imagine how she could have done better.

Highly recommended for the amazing photography, exceptionally professional though very early use of sound, and the typically perfect pace.

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.

While remembered as the first sound picture made by Alfred Hitchcock (or anyone else in Britain), there is much more to "Blackmail" than merely historical interest. It reveals the director's subtle creativity, with a carefully structured story that also produces some real suspense, with one of Hitchcock's best cameos and an entertaining chase sequence as bonuses. The movie has a unique feel, as Hitchcock was still using many silent film techniques at the same time that he was experimenting with sound. Not all of this works perfectly, but it does not detract from the film's many positive features.

Alice White (Anny Ondra, voice dubbed by Joan Barry) goes out for the evening with her boyfriend, who is a police detective (John Longden). When they have a series of minor quarrels, Alice decides to go her own way, and meets an artist friend. The artist's intentions are obvious, but Alice is innocently unaware. When he brings her to his studio, there is soon an unpleasant confrontation that sets in motion a turbulent series of events.

The story is carefully constructed not just to produce suspense but also to raise interesting questions in the viewer's mind. Alice feels a terrible sense of guilt and fear over what has happened - communicated to the viewer in a variety of creative ways - but of what is she really guilty? The behavior of the detective boyfriend is partly well-intentioned, but he certainly is not faultless. The moral ambiguity is often subtle, because it takes a back seat to the suspense, and it takes a couple of viewings to appreciate all that is going on.

There is a particularly nice symmetry to the beginning and ending, pointing to the greater significance of the action in between. The opening sequence (filmed in silent movie style) shows the detective and his partner dealing with a suspect in a routine way, not caring about him as a person. In the final scenes, when the detective must help Alice make a final report on everything that has happened, he sees his job in a far different perspective.

"Blackmail" is of the darker type of Hitchcock, like "Notorious" or "Vertigo". While clearly made in a different era, it has the same kind of depth and craftsmanship that distinguished those later, more well-known masterpieces.

Alfred Hitchcock's first talkie is an intriguing film, not entirely successful but still more enjoyable than some of the other films Hitch made around this time. The story starts with a woman cheating on her boyfriend, a Scotland Yard detective. When the man she's with tries to rape her, she kills him in self-defense. Afterwards a criminal who pieces it together blackmails her and her detective boyfriend.

A little creaky but that's to be expected under the circumstances. The film started out being made as a silent before it was decided to turn it into a sound picture. In spots it reverts back to a silent (without intertitles). This actually works in the film's favor. There are some really nicely done lengthy sequences with no dialogue, such as her walk home after she's killed the guy, punctuated by a scream. Good acting all around. Nice direction from Hitch. The museum climax is excellent; an early example of the defining set pieces that would become a Hitchcock trademark. Definitely worth a look if you're a fan. Or even if you're not, provided you enjoy pictures from this period. Not everyone does, unfortunately.

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.

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 .

Saw this for the first time the other night on Turner Classic network. The movie is really is a "proto-Hitchcock" style; You could catch a glimpse of the future "Bruno" (Robert Walker, Strangers on a Train) in the blackmailer. I suppose we can discuss character development and so on, but after all it was 1929,the first British talkie, and therefore at the beginning of a whole new concept. The scenes in the artist's bedroom were certainly risqué by American standards at the time. I understand the movie initially began as a silent film and a silent version was indeed filmed. Probably every future Hitchcock twist and turn in the plot is in there and I found it quite enjoyable.

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.

I have seen most of Alfred Hitchcock's films, silent and talking, and was saving this one for a special occasion. It was really quite good and although over-rated despite being cited so often (along with Mamoulian's "Applause") as a successful example of the transition between the silents and talkies in all the references I've consulted, it still has some distinct good qualities of its own. Annie Ondra is an excellent silent actress and this among several other films proves it. Her accent was very strong, of course, and employing Joan Barry to "lip-synch" was genial. Francois Truffaut's interviews with Hitchcock about working with Ms Ondra were enough to stimulate anyone's appetite to see her (and to hear Joan Barry) at work. The music - at least in the beginning - is excessively burdensome and "busy" and frankly irritating. However, when the characters finally began dialogue, it calmed down considerably and actually worked out well until the ending. We're seeing a hybrid here: a talkie and a part-talkie. When the talking itself finally happens, the characters aren't even facing the camera but are photographed from behind! This is the famous Hitchcock we know and love in the heat of action. The view of the staircase is very Hitchockian as in "Vertigo" or "Psycho" as well as the chase in a public monument (North by Northwest" comes to mind). Yes, the director made the move to talking pictures quite fluently and fluidly. One should keep in mind, too, that the film had already been completed as a silent before being converted into a talkie! All the more to admire...

Curtis Stotlar

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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This film may .not hold up among Hitchcock's great films from his golden years of 1948 through 1963, but compare it to any other talking picture from 1929 and then tell me what you think.

The fact is, this film is shot part silent. Yes there is sound, but there is no synchronized dialogue until about ten minutes into the film when the police detective and his girlfriend who are the central characters speak to one another. Shooting the film primarily silent with synchronized effects and leaving the talking sequences for segments of the film where dialogue was necessary and then having the judgment to know how much dialogue was enough and stop at that point was something Hitchcock got from the beginning. Watch some of the long-winded speeches from some other 1929 films and realize that many of Hitchcock's contemporaries struggled with this skill.

The story is a good one. Alice is feeling neglected by her police detective boyfriend, and follows a handsome artist up to his flat. After some flirting the artist turns suddenly violent and assaults her. She defends herself by grabbing a knife and stabbing the man. Stunned and sure she has not been seen by anyone entering the man's flat, she attempts to erase all signs of her presence there and returns home. She mentions the incident to no one, but is weighted down with guilt.

Frank, Alice's boyfriend, investigates the crime scene and sees Alice's glove. He confiscates it. Unfortunately, someone else who is not Alice has the other glove. The lovers don't discuss anything but the threat of the blackmailer until the end of the film. Like many of Hitchcock's later works, much of his art is in furtive glances and in objects that recall the crime rather than specific dialogue. An example of this is a jester in the artist's painting that Alice sees as pointing at her and thus accusing her. The jester meets Alice's eye both immediately after the crime and at the end of the film.

Highly recommended as one of the best talking pictures of 1929, but I am yet to find a satisfactory copy on DVD anywhere.

This was Hitchcock's – and the British film industry's – first full-length sound feature. While his earlier silent picture The Lodger is most often cited as the first example of what came to be known as "Hitchcockian", Blackmail really looks like the first time he consolidated his style and knew exactly what he wanted to achieve.

Blackmail is not literally "all-talking" – the first six or seven minutes are made up of an introductory silent sequence in which a criminal is hunted down, and this is in fact very well done, utilising all the techniques of tension and visual attention-grabbing that Hitch had perfected in his half-dozen or so preceding silent pictures. In fact, it would become a semi-regular feature throughout the rest of Hitch's career to begin with a little dialogue-free sequence to set the scene – for example the lengthy camera pans at the start of Rear Window (1954) which introduce all the other apartments and provide Jimmy Stewart's character's back-story.

Blackmail is noted for its creative use of sound, although perhaps it was circumstance more than anything else which encouraged Hitchcock to be experimental. The production was begun as a silent, but Hitch suspected it would later be upgraded to a talkie, so he began by shooting around the dialogue scenes, and shot a few with the actors backs to the camera so their voices could be dubbed in later. Also, Anny Ondra's thick accent meant she had to mime to Joan Barry who was reading her lines off set. All this must have given Hitchcock ideas for expressive sound design and off-screen sounds, using sound as a technique in itself, rather than as a whole new format.

It was probably with this film – and his next talkie, Murder! – that Hitchcock realised that crime and suspense were his forte. He appears to be having great fun building up the suspense and stringing out tense situations as far as they will go. It's one of the earliest Hitchcock pictures to really delve into a character's guilt and paranoia. Also very clear is the grisly delight he takes the subject matter. Typical Hitchcockian characters crop up for the first time. There is the sleazy blackmailer who is not appalled by the crime he has witnessed, but simply sees it as a chance to profit. Then there's the murder-obsessed gossip who seems to be a not-so-distant relative of Henry Travers and Hume Cronyn in Shadow of a Doubt (1943), or the housekeeper from Rear Window.

Even more perverse than all this gallows humour is Hitchcock's linking of sex and murder in that first pivotal scene, which really shows off the Hitchcock psychology. Crewe plays an elaborate game in order to get to see Alice in her underwear – but the way Hitchcock has placed the camera, the audience can see her all along! At the end of this scene, in her distraught state Alice still goes behind the screen to get changed even though she is now alone, but Hitchcock makes a mockery of her idea of privacy by placing the camera on her side of the screen. As well as being one of the most telling example of Hitchcock's disrespectful attitude towards his female victims, it hammers home perhaps the most fundamental idea in his approach to film-making – that there are three players involved here – the killer, the victim and the audience.

The story builds up to a tense and satisfying finale which established yet another Hitchcock first – a chase scene featuring a famous landmark, in this case the British museum – an idea suggested by the future director Michael Powell. Although it wouldn't be applied to him for some years yet, this is perhaps the first film where Hitchcock could have earned his nickname "The Master of Suspense". Blackmail does suffer from some of the problems of an early talkie, in particular the dialogue scenes are stilted and long-winded. Overall though it's a good solid effort, a significant Hitchcock and a promise of greater things to come.

It's not the crime itself, but the cover-up that entraps two lovers in this cleverly sinewy suspense film shot by Alfred Hitchcock early in his career.

How early? Apparently, the sound era arrives about ten minutes in, as the opening reel is shot entirely as a silent movie (minus "quote" cards) before switching to audible dialogue. Yet like many seemingly creaky elements of "Blackmail", this is something that actually works to the film's benefit and gives it a stylistic uniqueness that helps it stand out today.

Alice (Anny Ondra) steps out on her police detective boyfriend Frank (John Longden) to have fun with an artist she fancies named Crewe (Cyril Ritchard). A crime is committed instead, and she finds herself back in Frank's arms seeking his protection. Unfortunately for both of them, a sponger lowlife named Tracy (Donald Calthrop) knows what's doing and pressures the pair for his silence.

To really appreciate "Blackmail's" skewed perspective, it's important to understand Hitchcock's complex view of the law. By all accounts a law-abiding, socially upright man, he nevertheless nursed an extreme dread of John Law dating back to a childhood episode when he was locked in a cell to be taught a lesson. As a director, Hitchcock presented authority figures as vaguely menacing, while reserving his greatest sympathy for outsiders who found themselves, rightly or wrongly, on the run.

The first image of "Blackmail" is the spinning tire of a police quick-response van, or is it a roulette wheel? The capricious nature of law enforcement is always on view, whether it's a bobby sauntering outside an apartment window while Alice screams for help inside or Frank using his authority to subvert a murder investigation.

This is the rare Hitchcock film that features fine acting bottom-to-top, but Calthrop stands out best as Tracy, the personification of the core ambiguity of this film. Described as "kind of mousy", given to smirking while pleading for help and whistling when he thinks he has the upper hand, Tracy seems easy to hate at first glance but isn't, not as Calthrop imbues him with a vulnerability anyone can relate to, cutting across the staginess around him with a dynamic performance that anticipates how cinema liberated the actor from hidebound stagecraft.

"One's got to live, you know!" he says, but the people he says this to act as if this is yet another of Tracy's unreasonable demands. We end the film pulling for him with as much passion as we pulled away from him at first encounter.

Subtle directorial touches abound, like Alice holds her face in an expression we see mirrored in a cut-to scene of Tracy fleeing through the British Museum while an impassive giant mask looks on. There's also clever use of the new sound medium (the "knife" one's not subtle, but a lot of fun) and knowing humor, like a conversation about a new crime film. Frank, being from Scotland Yard, scoffs at such fiction, but Alice thinks it has merit: "I heard they got a real criminal to direct it, just to be on the safe side."

About the only negatives are the static compositions and bad audio, problems of the period and not of the film. "Blackmail" even has a terrific final shot, which Hitchcock never topped until his final film, "Family Plot". It's another rueful note on the hit-or-miss quality of law enforcement, one that stays with you after the laughter fades.