Blackmail (1929)

Alfred Hichcock could make a good movie. This is not one of the them. If you want to see a good Alfred Hichcock movie see Psycho. Do not see this. This has an awful story line. It has an awful ending. It is not a good movie.

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, who adapted the Charles Bennett play, this slightly above average drama is credited with being the first British sound film. Unfortunately, the sound quality is abysmal. After watching it on TCM, I learned from Robert Osborne that the lead actress's (Anny Ondra, from Austria-Hungary - now Poland) lines were being dubbed in real-time (by Joan Barry, uncredited) off "stage", which helped explain a bit of this (but not all of it).This film opens with a 10 minute long sequence, done strictly with music like a silent film (since the film was shot during the transition period; the silent version released is said to be better than this sound one), which is outstanding. It establishes several locales and police officer characters.Alice White (Ondra), who maintains an "on again, off again" relationship dating Detective Frank Webber (John Longden), flirts with an artist (Cyril Ritchard) while dining with her beau. After dumping the detective, she goes with the artist to his apartment where she goes too far to be shocked by his advances. When he won't be denied her sexual favors, she kills him with a bread knife and flees. However, she was seen leaving by a moocher (Donald Calthrop) who was hanging out nearby and entered the apartment building after she fled.After a sleepless night walking the streets in frightened despair, Alice sneaks upstairs to her bedroom which happens to be above her family's cigar shop. Her mother (Sara Allgood) visits her room just after she'd gotten into bed and tells her to come have breakfast. Alice joins her family (her father is played by Charles Paton) and a neighbor who, naturally, are discussing the (now discovered) murder that occurred the previous night. Preoccupied, Alice hears nothing besides the work KNIFE being spoken over and over again.Detective Webber arrives and has a brief conversation with his girlfriend, in the shop's phone-booth, about the glove of hers he'd found, and concealed from the other detectives, at the crime scene. While showing it to her, the moocher turned blackmailer, enters the phone-booth to reveal he's got her other glove! My favorite scene follows, and I won't spoil it other than to say that the prey (the Scotland Yard detective and his girl) turn the tables on their blackmailer, which leads to the requisite Hitchcock chase. This transition, including the realization on the detective's and then the blackmailer's faces, is done quite well.Additionally, it's interesting to see flashes of the master that Hitchcock would become: the use of an institution, in this case a museum complete with an Egyptian statue and harrowing rooftop, as a backdrop for the chase (ala Saboteur (1942) and North by Northwest (1959), and the women's screams (Ondra's with the landlady's that discovers the body) that are combined ala The 39 Steps (1935) (e.g. with a train whistle).

Sir Alfred Hitchcock was already a well known film director mostly for his silent films. This film is his talking picture. Blackmail is a short film but worth noting in studying Hitchcock's film catalog. This film stars Anna Ondry who plays a shopkeeper's daughter. She is beautiful and charming. She gets into trouble when she defends herself by killing the artist and leaving the scene. Hitchcock's includes his favorites like Sara Allgood. The film doesn't have too much suspense but we do feel for Alice in her situation but the plot is predictable for the most part. The cast is small enough and focuses on Alice mostly.

The premise of an "accidental" murder was visited by Hitchcock many times during his career and is central to the movie. Sadly, the result, originally planned as a silent with a number of scenes re-shot with sound and sound FX added to external shots is lumpy and uneven. Hitch, who was originally a writer of the dialog cards shown through silent movies didn't yet grasp the value of the spoken word and subtle acting for the camera. Consequently there is much hammy mugging to express anger, sadness, dismay and panic. Anny Oudra, subsequently a BIG star in German and Czech movies is very attractive but the need to dub another actress's voice in a disastrous "cut glass" accent, totally wrong for a store keeper's daughter is an epic fail. Similarly, Donald Calthrop, the blackmailer adopts a stage London accent that hovers somewhere between Claridges and Bethnal Green. The most egregious casting has to be John Longden as the hunky leading man, he wears an ill fitting suit, too short in the sleeve and leg and spends much of his time with his hands either in his pockets or massaging them menacingly at chest level. He seems to have only three expressions, anger, with dark brows furrowed, joy, with a rictus of a smile and baffled, with head cocked and eyes half closed.The movie has a place in history but as a story it is uneven and pedestrian and sunk by the limited skills of it's leading players.