Saturday night, I took my oldest to see Blackmail, Alfred Hitchcock's -- and, as far as legend is concerned, Great Britain's -- first sound film. Except that it was part of the series The Hitchcock 9, produced by the BFI last year and now "on tour" in the States. That is, the nine still surviving silent films Hitchcock made in the mid-to-late twenties.
So, if you're confused, let me explain. Blackmail was being made as the major film studios were addressing the questions pertaining to the use of sound in producing motion pictures: there were questions of economics, technology, etc. Blackmail had been conceived as a silent film, but at some point during production, British International decided the film would be promoted as England's first sound picture. (Some books suggest that Hitchcock had anticipated this possibility even in preproduction.) This created a few complications: early sound film made production a bit clumsy, as equipment was still something to get used to. In the case of this film, the lead actress, Anny Ondra, was Polish and spoke English with a heavy accent, so her voice was dubbed by an English actress, Joan Barry. (Ondra did lip-sync perfectly, it must be said.) Despite the complications, Blackmail is an impressive early sound film, when compared to some of the clumsy early productions from Hollywood.
Like many pictures in those days, Blackmail was also released as a silent version; not every theater had been re-wired for sound right away. (Indeed, I've been told of a silent version of It Happened One Night, made nearly a decade after the introduction of sound to Hollywood.) But in the case of Blackmail, the silent version fell into nonuse, and the sound version, given its historical importance, was hailed as the "true" version. the BFI has handsomely restored all the Hitchcock silent films, including the silent version of Blackmail. As a person very familiar with the sound version, I was thrilled to be seeing this version, which has been very difficult to located on video in the States. And, with live orchestral accompaniment, I was not disappointed.
It's interesting to see how much of the spoken dialogue in the sound version appears as intertitles in the silent one. There really wasn't that much to add in that regard, except for the song sung by the artiste Mr. Crewe, something clearly put in to emphasize the novelty of hearing sound in film, though it does also provide a counterpoint to the image of Ondra changing her clothes. One of the most famous scenes in the sound version is the "knife" sequence, where a gossipy customer has been going on about how the Mr. Crewe's murderer should not have used a knife. In the scene, Ondra's character, Alice, has only just returned from Crewe's flat, having stabbed him in self-defense. (He was forcing himself on her.) Her father asks her to cut the bread served for breakfast, and the customer keeps blathering, but all Alice hears is the word "knife," until she loses it and tosses the bread knife away in a panic. The scene is played out in the silent version, too, though with no emphasis on "knife." Interestingly, the actress who played the gossipy customer in the sound version is not the same as the one who played the part in the silent version.
I hope the BFI releases these films onto home video; I would love to compare the two versions of the film. I must say that the silent version is visually impressive and seems to have a very droll sense of humor that is a trademark of Hitchcock. The film has the same basic theme, obviously, but the camera is more fluid in the silent version, though Hitchcock is a master even at this early stage.
Oh, and my kid loved it!
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