BLACKMAIL B+
Great Britain (86
mi) 1929
d: Alfred Hitchcock
Depending on how you look at it, this is either the final
silent Hitchcock film or the first full-length British talking picture, as
Hitchcock shot both versions simultaneously, though the talking version
featured a few casting adjustments, including the use of an offscreen voice for
the leading lady, Anny Ondra, Hitchcock’s first icy blonde, an aloof beauty,
sophisticated, smart, and dangerous, traits that Hitchcock felt made the best
victims, claiming “They're like virgin snow that shows up the bloody
footprints.” Ondra, however, spoke with
a thick Czech accent, supposedly resembling Hungarian actress Zsa Zsa Gabor, so
they felt it was unsuitable for a talking picture (That never stopped Zsa Zsa).
Some of the original footage with spoken
dialogue also implemented music and sound effects, but they also re-shot a few
scenes and used the voice of actress Joan Barry speaking off camera, but the
lip-synched words never found the natural rhythm of the silent version, which
is now the preferred version, having been restored in 2012 by the British Film
Institute along with 8 earlier silent era Hitchcock films, known as The Hitchcock
9, which are now making the rounds in theaters around the world in pristine
35 mm prints. For some screenings, the
film is accompanied by newly commissioned scores, original music written
especially for the films by the Mont Alto Orchestra, a five piece chamber
ensemble that has scored over 100 silent films using the repertoire and scoring
techniques of the orchestras in movie theaters during the silent film era,
while other screenings feature live pipe organ accompaniment. Hitchcock had by now hit his stride in making
silent films, which have a rhythm all their own, where in his view “silent
pictures were the purest form of cinema,” where a director’s talent was largely
based upon his ability to advance a story using the least amount of dialogue
title cards. While the talking version
was the first version to hit the theaters, receiving overwhelmingly rave
reviews, where sound in its inventive first use was certainly historical and
far more influential, but most theaters were still not equipped for sound, so
it was the silent version that proved most popular with the public.
What marks this film among Hitchcock’s early silent features
is the sophistication of theme, as it’s largely a character driven film where
the focus continually moves back and forth between various characters, continually
shifting throughout, offering the audience multiple points of view, written and
adapted from screenwriter Charles Bennett’s own play, the first of several
collaborations with Hitchcock, including THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1934), The 39
Steps (1935), Sabotage (1936), and Young
and Innocent (1937), before leaving
England to work with Hitchcock in America on Foreign
Correspondent (1940). The film opens as a strict
police procedural, with a view of London’s streets whizzing by from the racing
police paddy wagons, where after arresting a suspected criminal holed up in his
seedy room, with point of view shots moving from the police, to the criminal,
and back to the police again, it’s viewed as just another day at the job by
Scotland Yard detective Frank (John Longden).
But Frank receives an earful from his waiting girlfriend Alice (Anny
Ondra), who impatiently complains that she doesn’t like to wait. In the sound version, it opens exactly the
same way in a mechanized rhythm of silence, with streets sounds the first
sounds heard slowly added, until by the time it gets to Alice, it is full-blown
sound from then on. As they go out to
dinner to the Lyon’s Cornerhouse at Piccadilly Circus, they amusingly have to
wait for an open table, as the place is packed, and once seated, it’s so busy
they have to wait once again for someone to wait on them, which only
infuriorates Alice, causing the two to get into an argument where Frank storms
out in disgust, but sees her leaving with another gentleman. Alice allows herself to be taken upstairs to
the studio of a young artist (Cyril Ritchard, of Captain Hook fame), supposedly
to view his paintings (No, he didn’t ask if she’d like to come up to see his
etchings), but he has other intentions, plying her with alcohol as he has her
change into various model’s costumes before he sexually assaults her, where in
defending herself, expressed with a shadowy hand hovering over a knife that she
can be seen frantically reaching for on the table, she kills him with a butter
knife, all taking place behind a curtain, his limp arm finally hanging out the
window. In a wordless scene she emerges
from behind the curtain shocked and in something of a daze afterwards, still
holding the knife and dressed in her undergarments, one of the first Hitchcock
scenes to attain this degree of intensity, where she walks the streets all
night until returning home in the morning, acting as if nothing has
happened.
Her family owns a corner tobacco market selling cigarettes
and cigars, where their morning routine is unchanged except her father (Charles
Paton) takes a heightened interest in a murder that’s taken place just around
the corner. The picture of guilt all
morning, constantly reminded of what she’s done, Alice soon realizes Frank has
been assigned to the case, finding one of her gloves on the scene, which he
doesn’t disclose to the police. So while
all the gossip in the shop is about a murder, Frank and Alice conceal their
guilty consciences, which is given a somewhat humorous treatment by Hitchcock,
playfully toying with their pent-up fears and emotions, first by her ever
inquisitive father, then by a gossip who won’t shut up, and finally by a
passing stranger named Tracy (Donald Calthrop) who has found the other glove
and with sadistic relish attempts to blackmail Frank. Tracy has the upper hand initially, but the
tables turn when it’s discovered he has a criminal record and there is proof he
was outside the scene of the crime, but he escapes out the window just as the
police arrive, turning into a rollicking chase scene through the streets of
London, reaching a climax at the British
Museum, where due to a lack of sufficient light, Hitchcock utilized the Schüfftan
process, shooting into mirrors that create the illusion of a huge, realistic looking
room. This is the first of three Hitchcock
films shot on location at an actual national monument, the others being the
Statue of Liberty in SABOTEUR (1942) and Mount Rushmore in North
By Northwest (1959). Inside the museum the blackmailer
is seen continually eluding police, climbing down a hanging chain past the
peering eyes of a colossal head of an Egyptian god that may be King Ramses,
eventually climbing onto the domed roof of the British Museum Reading Room, much like
Cody Jarrett’s legendary ascent up the steps of a fuel refinery storage tank in
White
Heat (1949), where at the top he slips and falls to his death, conveniently
wrapping up the case for the police, except Alice is so tormented with guilt
that she wishes to confess to the police.
This is the Hitchcock factor, the first of Hitchcock’s guilty women
films, preceding the likes of Janet Leigh, Tippi Hedron, or Grace Kelly, vulnerable
women wracked by an impending moral dilemma, placing them on the verge of a
psychological breakdown. Hitchcock has a
recurring focus on staircases and hands, like Lady Macbeth trying to wash the
blood away, which are used to express the emotional fragility of the character,
but also there are constantly recurring knife motifs, where the most clever is
Alice in her head seeing a neon sign suddenly change from a cocktail shaker to
a stabbing knife. Perhaps most
interestingly is the condescending and comedic use of a large painting at the
scene of the crime of a clown jester laughing, where the mocking face absurdly
comments not only on what’s taking place during the murder scene, literally
laughing *at* Alice, like how did you get yourself into this mess, but also the
deceitful moral order surrounding the events, as the painting is seen again at
the finale, suggesting an ironic offshoot of “The
Wrong Man (1956)” theme, as the wrong man dies for a crime he didn’t
commit, which in the end is being laughed off by the one who did, along with her
boyfriend who helps cover it up.
Note – Hitchcock had a different ending in mind, revealed in
his infamous Truffaut interviews, where after the death of the blackmailer,
Alice confesses to the crime, where Frank would be forced to process her arrest,
exactly the same images as we saw in the opening scene, placing her in
handcuffs, booking her arrest, taking fingerprints, where he and his partner
would meet in the men’s room afterwards washing their hands, as they did in the
opening, where the unknowing partner would ask, “Are you going out with your
girl tonight?” and Frank would answer, “No, I’m going straight home.” The producers claimed this ending was too
depressing. Hitchcock’s signature cameo
appearance comes at about the 10-minute mark, and at 20-seconds is probably the
lengthiest in his film career, as he’s reading a book while riding the London
subway train alongside Frank and Alice, but he’s constantly irritated by a
small boy who is a continual nuisance to the passengers, especially Hitchcock,
seen grabbing at his hat.
