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| Festival Year |
Festival Section |
| 1999 |
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| Film Title |
BLACKMAIL |
| Alternative Title 1 |
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| Alternative Title 2 |
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| Alternative Title 3 |
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| Country |
GB |
| Release Date |
1929 |
| Production Co. |
British-International Pictures |
| Director |
Hitchcock, Alfred (also sc.)
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| Format |
|
Speed (fps) |
| 35mm |
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24 |
| |
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| Footage |
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Time |
| 6780 ft. |
|
75' |
| Archive Source |
National Film & Television Archive (silent version) |
| |
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| Print Notes |
Didascalie in inglese / English titles. |
| Cast |
Anny Ondra
John Longden
Sara Allgood
Charles Paton
Donald Calthrop
Cyril Ritchard
Harvey Braban
Phyllis Monkman
Hannah Jones
Percy Parsons
Johnny Butt
Joyce Barnham |
| |
| Other Credits |
Maxwell, John (prod.)
Levy, Benn W. (sc.)
Bennett, Charles (sc.)
Cox, Jack (ph.)
de Ruelle, Emile (ed.)
Arnold, Wilfred C. (des.)
Arnold, Norman (des.) |
| |
| Other Information |
Dal testo teatrale di / from the play by Charles Bennett.
Studio: Elstree. |
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| Program Notes |
Much later, Hitchcock insisted that the only point of interest in The Manxman was that it was "the last of my silent films". The Jazz Singer opened in London in the Autumn of 1928, while The Manxman was being shot, and though there was no way that that film, much of it shot on location, with Cornwall standing in for the Isle of Man, could be made over into a talkie, Hitchcock was eager to try the new medium. All the same, bearing in mind particularly the expense of shooting with sound, his next film, Blackmail, was begun as a silent film, again starring the foreign Anny Ondra as a routinely English girl. The story of how Hitchcock began, in secret, shooting a parallel talkie version to present to his producers as a fait accompli is well known, as are the problems Anny Ondra posed with her very strong and quite inappropriate Middle-European accent - eventually resolved by having Ondra mouth her lines while an English actress, Joan Barry, spoke them off-screen. The sensational effect of the sound version has, however, distracted attention from the completed silent version, which was necessary because only a very few cinemas in the country were at that time equipped for sound. In fact, the silent version is arguably the stronger of the two. The set pieces in the sound version, like the selective repetition and amplification of the word "Knife" over the breakfast table the morning after the heroine has accidentally stabbed a man to death, seem self-conscious, and remain isolated effects which do not integrate into the overall rhythm of the film. The silent version, though much less obviously adventurous, works more satisfactorily as a whole. The sound version is more notable for its ambitions, the silent version for its achievement. -JRT
The sound version of Blackmail will be shown in the course of the Giornate as a reference screening:
"It was shot first, in its entirety, as a silent picture, but its completion coincided with the widespread use of sound by several Hollywood companies. A desperate decision was made by the producers, British International Pictures, to refilm the bulk of the picture in sound, salvaging just those shots in which sound could be dubbed or was not an essential. Thus Hitchcock became the first British director to engage in the production of a talking film, and he took it in his brilliant stride. Indeed, he brought a new technique to its production, showing a complete understanding of his medium. R.E. Jeffrey, later to become famous as the commentator on Universal Talking News, was engaged as dialogue director (or, 'Director of Elocution' as he was then known); then a complication occurred because Anny Ondra, who played Alice White … could speak little or no English. Thus it became necessary for her voice to be dubbed by an unknown young English actress, Joan Barry (who later became an important British star in the 1930s). Much of the dubbing was done on the sound track, but often it became necessary for Miss Barry to secrete herself near the microphone as Miss Ondra mouthed the dialogue. It added to Hitchcock difficulties, but he triumphed superbly over this and other obstacles. In all, Blackmail was a difficult and exciting film to make. Little did Hitchcock or his cast realise that this was a motion picture destined for world fame and one which would go down in cinema history. Not only was it the first talking film made in England, but for many years it remained the best.
"Blackmail contains a number of instances of Hitchcock's imaginative use of sound. When the girl sits in her father's shop trembling with fear of the consequences of the deed she has committed, her detective-fiancé enters the shop. As she sees his face and suspects that he knows her guilt, the clang of the shop bell reverberates in her brain like the clang of doom. Hitchcock held the ring of the bell all the way along the sound track while the girl gazed fascinatedly at her fiancé's face. Did he know that she was a murderess? Had he come to take her to Scotland Yard? One could sense these questions flashing through her mind through Hitchcock's use of the sound track.
"Again, the girl at the breakfast table is made painfully aware of the previous night's deed (in which she had killed the artist with a bread-knife) when her father, loaf of bread in hand, asks her to pass the bread-knife. As she looks up with glazed eyes, the word 'Breadknife', 'Breadknife', 'Breadknife' echoes along the sound track. The atmosphere of fear, guilt and hysteria were extraordinarily well conveyed by what must always be considered one of Hitchcock's particular strokes of genius. He perfected and developed his own inimitable technique of sound film production to an extraordinary degree during the next twenty years." (Peter Noble, Index to the Work of Alfred Hitchcock, 1949)
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