Blackmail (1929)

The yet to be filmmaking legend Alfred Hitchcock was the lucky man set to direct the first British sound feature film with a picture that would embody the very heart of this auteur's film stylings that would be seen in his classic pictures for years to come. Blackmail was a stage play turned Hitchcock film that would lend to the creative hands of the man that would one day be called the "master of suspense."

The film is about (you guessed it!) blackmail, particularly to that of a young lady named Alice (Anny Ondra), whom while in the act of being raped by a friend she was too flirtatious with murdered attacker in self defense. The picture follows her agony as she tries to continue her normal life the day after she had killed a man. Her boyfriend, detective Frank Weber (John Longden), discovers evidence that Alice was in fact the murderer, but covers it up and tries to help Alice, when a sleazy thief named Tracey (Donald Calthrop) who happens to have his own evidence against Alice blackmails the them both as murderer and man trying to cover up the murder. Tides turn on Tracey when he becomes the prime suspect in the murder case which leads to a suspenseful chase through the British Museum and eventual fall to his death. The film concludes with a guilt stricken Alice as she desperately tries to confess the murder, but can never seem to get the truth out, leaving her haunted by the death committed by her hands.

This motion picture is best known for the fact that it is considered the first British feature film to feature sound. Originally the film was in the middle of production as a silent film, but producers decided to up the cost and make it a sound picture, leading to Hitchcock re-shooting several scenes with recorded sound. This would lead to two final versions of the film produced, a silent version and a sound version. Hitch's first dabble into the world of sound would help shape his filmmaking techniques with his use of sound, or even the lack there of to allow the audience's imagination fill in the blanks. What I speak of when I say this is a scene where Frank takes a call and we hear only part of the conversion, but when he closes the door to the phone booth we are only left with muffled noises and his body language to go with, leaving you wanting desperately to know what he is being discussed about the murderer and what might happen with this new information. Hitchcock's sound editing is marvelous, playing up to the suspense being manifested on screen, not just accommodating to the picture, but adding a new layer of depth to the visuals themselves.

This particular picture shared many of the similar aspects that Alfred Hitchcock would reuse in his many classics he would produce throughout the twentieth century. First off is that the film was an adaptation of a stageplay, this one by playwright and screenwriter Charles Bennett, a writer Hitchcock would work with many times in the future. The story consisted of a murder and suspense where the main character and the audience suspects something to happen and itches to see it play out. His editing is a thing of beauty in the picture as it creates the the uneasiness that a great suspenseful movie has, and here he does it with the new concept of a sound picture for the first time. His fascination with police officers and other law enforcers is prominent in the picture as is true in his many other works, for he was frightened as a young child by being put in a jail cell by his father as a punishment. This emotional scarring gave him an awe in authority figures that would play an impact in his life and films for the remainder of his life. The movie also contains a common ingredient of a blond beauty, which we will see Hitch had a definite thing for blonds as his women of chose in his pictures.

The film was a critical and commercial success, hailed for its silent version as well as being an innovation in sound for cinema in Britain. There were obvisious differences in the shots recorded with sound and those that are not, as the people move at the familiarly slightly faster pace in the shots filmed with a silent movie camera, but Hitchcock had a wonderful mix of recorded audio to play over it to allow it to play out very well together with the shots with real time recorded audio. One last interesting tid bit of movie trivia to note is that star Anny Ondra was hired for the silent film and when it was changed to a sound picture the Ondra with her heavy native Czech accent proved too difficult to understand they hired voice actress Joan Barry to sit just off screen to speak her lines as Anny lip synced the words, as post production voice dubbing would have been too difficult to do in that time. I would say the proccess was a success as it could go mostly unnoticed by a common movie watcher, but it obvious (yep very impressive) if you look for it. The film is very entertianing to watch and though slow at parts keeps you watching with anticipation, waiting to see what will happen next. It is not the best Hitchcock film, but it is very interesting to watch an older film of his and still see the steady skilled hand of the artist work his magic that would be seen in the works for decades to come.