Blackmail (1929)

Film: Blackmail (1929)

Stars: Anny Ondra, John Longden, Cyril Ritchard, Donald Calthrop

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

(Throughout the year, in connection with our 'Saturdays with the Stars' series, I am watching every gap I have in Alfred Hitchcock's filmography in what we're calling 'Sunday Leftovers.'  Every Sunday, I'll be watching a Hitchcock film that I've never seen before as I spend 2021 completing his filmography)

As I mentioned last week, Hitchcock is officially entering the Sound Era with this week's Sunday Leftovers, never to return back to silent pictures.  Blackmail, though, wasn't just the first moment for Hitchcock in the Sound Era, but in fact the first sound film, period from British cinema, making it the historic equivalent in the UK to what The Jazz Singer is to American audiences.  As I've mentioned on here a couple of times, The Jazz Singer is not a good movie, a reputation pretty much everyone who discusses it admits, even if the film itself is an inescapable part of film history if you're a completionist.  Blackmail, however, still enjoys a solid reputation amongst both Hitchcock enthusiasts and film fans in general, so I was curious what it would entail, particularly as the title indicated we were headed into Hitchcock's strong suit.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie follows Alice White (Ondra), whose boyfriend Detective Frank Webber (Longden) has just gotten into a fight with her.  As a result, she storms off, perhaps to make him jealous or perhaps just to see what else is out there, with Mr. Crewe (Ritchard), an artist.  While they are flirty together, it's quickly clear that Mr. Crewe has other intentions, and though it happens off-screen, it's pretty evident in the movie that he intends to rape Alice...until she pulls out a knife and kills him.  She quickly tries to cover up her crime, but forgets her gloves in the studio.  When the body is found the next day, Frank is one of the detectives on the case and finds one of Alice's gloves, and goes to talk to her (where she neither confirms nor denies her involvement in Crewe's death).  Meanwhile, a local man called Tracy (Calthrop) finds the other glove, and soon starts to blackmail the two, assuming they are covering up for each other in terms of the death.  Frank tries to reverse and say they'll blame Tracy, a former felon.  This causes a chase, and in the process, Tracy dies, with everyone assuming he's the killer.  In the end Alice does confess to Frank the real cause of the crime (that it was self-defense), and they live happily ever after...though with the canvas that Alice painted with Mr. Crewe still in evidence, a permanent admission to her involvement in the death.

The film, like a number of films in 1929, was originally intended to be silent (if you look hard enough you can apparently find silent versions of the picture, though I saw the sound one for this review).  You can see this in that the dialogue does feel ancillary to the plot-much of the movie is about visual storytelling.  What's great here, though, is that Hitchcock is given giant leeway with the plot.  The story of Alice's self-defense reads as shocking, and though the word "rape" doesn't get uttered in the picture, it hangs so ferociously it might as well have.  I'm curious as we get into the rest of Hitch's pre-Code films in the coming weeks how often he uses this looser, more jaw-dropping ability to amplify his script to his advantage.  I also loved Hitchcock's use of the British Museum for the chase sequence, foreshadowing everything from Mt. Rushmore to the Golden Gate Bridge in future pictures (the man loved his monuments).

This is a tightly-scripted film otherwise.  Short, without much fat on the plot, it works well.  Like all prototypical films (it's clear that Blackmail influenced not just Hitchcock's later films, but everyone from Fritz Lang to Michael Powell (the latter of whom worked on the picture for their on-set publicity photography), it reads as a bit provincial to modern audiences, mostly because you know that something better would be coming out of this (like The Lady Vanishes or Notorious), but this is an impressive sound debut from Hitchcock, even if much of the film's strength still resides in silent movie techniques.