44. Blackmail (1929)

Directed By Alfred Hitchcock

Synopsis

Girl goes out with artist... artist tries to rape girl, girl kills him. Girl gets blackmailed, hence the title. Blackmailer gets falsely accused and dies, assassin goes scot-free.

Review

So, Britain's first talkie. In fact Hitchcock is quite smart about it, the film starts as a silent movie, and about 5 minutes into it it goes into a talkie and remains that for the rest of the film. It throws you a curve-ball, you think you are watching a silent film, but no!

Ok, I really love Hitchcock, and this is not one of his best films, but it certainly has his mark in it. There is the obligatory cameo, sitting in a train, there are great camera angles and voyeurism is very much present, as we identify with Alice's boyfriend chasing her and her artist lover.

Yet, this is quite a simple film for Hitchcock's standards, it is the simplest of blackmail stories and although compelling and exciting throughout it is not one of his most accomplished plots.

The voices are quite well dubbed except for Anny Ondra's, the main actress as she was a Czech and not very fluent in English she was dubbed by a very annoying voice which doesn't always fit the character. Sound is actually a pretty powerful weapon in Hitchcock's arsenal, he uses sound to reinforce psychological moods, like the repetition of the word knife in a certain scene, or simple background speech. He doesn't feel the need to have all words be perfectly pronounced, they are there to add texture to the film. Good film overall, but not that interesting really. Buy it from Amazon UK or US.

Final Grade

6/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The film was not originally intended to be a talkie and began production as a silent film. However, the film's producers, British International Pictures, decided part-way through the production to make the film Britain's first sound film. This has several implications on the film. A significant amount of footage had been filmed without sound before the decision was made. Some of these scenes were re-shot with sound, though some remained without sound, as shot.