Blackmail (Alfred Hitchcock, 1929) [Sound version]
Watching England's first talkie, I kept thinking that it could have been a really great sound film in another five years; or a really great silent film a year earlier. I didn't realize until reading up on it afterwards after that a silent version does indeed exist. I'll definitely be giving it a look as part of this marathon, especially since the talkie version of Blackmail is plagued by many of the typical troubles of early sound films, with the new technology having a limiting effect on visual artistry. Much of Blackmail is clumsy and uneven, with a very poor sense of rhythm and, in many scenes, a surprising disregard of spatial orientation. There are two great scenes: the culmination of the first act (see screenshot) and the chase through the British Musuem. Most everything else teeters between between adequate and disappointing, with the latter response ultimately winning the day. Even at eighty-minutes, the sound version of Blackmail tried my patience too much for me to recommend it.
Grade: C+
pixote
I hear what you're saying about the sound, technology, the limiting of visual artistry (it does seem a step back, in that regard, from something like
The Lodger, which, when I go through it, has so many gorgeous, communicative frames - here's PowerPoint of some stills I made for my students:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1BWviJPOhh3e33G8vSnUjy94TKz2hxgSv7UtUx8obGuQ/edit?usp=sharing ), the odd rhythm - but still, I loved it and found it as effectively unsettling as
The Lodger. Anny Ondra's face is akin to a Lilian Gish face relative to silent cinema (I wonder how her line readings would change her performance? She was, of course, only mouthing the words while English actress Joan Barry spoke the dialogue out of the frame), and I actually liked the disorienting rhythm - the long sequence of the police procedure in the beginning (loved that sequence when the cops arrive in the bedroom), then the crowded tea room, then the long sequence in the artist's studio leading up to the essential event. It's an event that feels like it should come sooner, perhaps, but I appreciated how long a time we spent in that studio, with the artist, who doesn't seem threatening at all at first (his cat-and-mouse singing was so effective, I thought). And the little visual joke of the curly shadow on the artist's lip - like an old-timey villain's mustache - is pretty great. I also really loved the aftermath - Alice wandering through the streets and making her way, finally, home, where she finds no real haven. Perhaps the most draggy sequence is in the shop, but I liked the shift we witness from the blackmailer as a threat - and mockingly enjoying his status - to Frank becoming, essentially, the same mocking threat to the blackmailer, and Alice's discomfort in the face of both. The mirroring of the blackmailer and Frank is evocative, touching on one of Hitchcock's interests, of course, in the moral ambiguity of the "good" characters, of those standing in for moral authority and order.
Did you read about the fact that Hitch initially wanted a different ending but the producers said it was "too depressing"? He wanted the end to mirror the beginning, but to instead have the wheels of the justice system working against Alice--someone we know and care about--leading to her arrest and prosecution. And then, instead of seeing Frank, like we do in the beginning, casually joking around with the other officers and swinging handcuffs, we see him going home, now burdened with the weight of police-work in a way he hadn't been at the beginning. I do like the ending as is - that jester/joker portrait is quite effective (and that brief glimpse we get of Alice's sketch on the back as it is carried away) - but it would have been interesting to see Hitch's original idea played out and would have perhaps made more sense of the beginning sequence.