Boston Globe (28/Jul/1985) - Hitchcock's first talkie

Details

• article: Hitchcock's first talkie
• author(s): Jay Carr
• newspaper: Boston Globe (28/Jul/1985)
• keywords: Alfred Hitchcock, Anny Ondra, Benn W. Levy, Blackmail (1929), British Museum, London, Charles Bennett, Charles Paton, Cyril Ritchard, Donald Calthrop, John Longden, Noël Coward, Sara Allgood, Scotland Yard, London

Article

Hitchcock's first talkie

BLACKMAIL

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, screenplay by Hitchcock, Benn W. Levy and Charles Bennett from Bennett's play. Starring Anny Ondra, Sara Allgood, John Longden, Charles Paton, Donald Calthorp, Cyril Ritchard. Goodtimes Video, VHS and Beta, $14.95.

Hitchcock shot "Blackmail" as a silent in 1929, but his studio wanted sound, so he dubbed it, and it became England's first talkie as well as Hitchcock's. It's still striking. Hitchcock's work in Germany left him conversant with German cinema; his bold black-and-white compositions show him well able to bend German expressionist principles to his own uses, especially in the climactic chase through and atop the British Museum. Moreover, the film is startlingly modern; Hitchcock presents his characters' moral ambiguities sagely, suspensefully and playfully.

The blackmail victim is a Scotland Yard detective who's concealing evidence that his fiancee killed an artist who tried to rape her. Anny Ondra (a German actresss whose voice was dubbed) flirts with the artist in a restaurant, is flattered by his attentions and picks a quarrel with the detective so she can go off with the artist. Yet, when she sticks a bread knife into him under the leering face of a painting of Rigoletto the jester, we're convinced that it was panic. Cyril Ritchard, as the lecherous artist, seduces her with a few entertaining and sophisticated Noel Coward-like riffs at the piano. This is full-blown Hitchcock, slyly entertaining, excitingly paced and edited, with lots of Hitchcock touches, including his obligatory appearance, as a subway passenger.