Starting Monday, I'm beginning a class on Alfred Hitchcock, so there will be lots of his films I'll be watching over the next few months. We're kicking it off with a very important film for ol' Al: Blackmail.
This was Hitchcock's first talkie. In fact, it was advertised as “The First British Talkie!” And all the while, the film was shot as though it were going to be a silent film. Only after filming did John Maxwell, the producer of the movie, set up a temporary sound stage with RCA equipment imported from America to do post-dubbing.
It's interesting knowing that now, after watching the film, because if I didn't know any better, I'd have said that Hitchcock was already well on his way to mastering the audio-visual medium altogether, based on Blackmail. The film moves with intelligent vigor and intentional, inspirational camerawork. I was keeping a mental track of the shots in this that surprised or impressed me, but then there became too many to remember by the one-hour mark. At every turn theres a fresh take on how to convey something.
When Alice is back home with her family, and the patron of the store keeps saying, "Knife... knife... knife... KNIFE!" as the camera creeps in on Alice's face, I was tilting my head, trying to think of any number of films and television shows that have borrowed that same setup. And the same goes for any number of other classic formal tropes that we all take for granted now. Of course, I can't say for certain that Hitchcock was inventing them on the spot or if they appear prior to this film, but to the best of MY knowledge, there are shots, transitions, compositions, etc, that I haven't seen in any films pre-1929.
And also, I don't want to forget the actual plot of this film, which is chock-full of all the trappings that we expect to see in a Hitchcock joint. You have a woman cheating on her husband to go up to some artists loft, only the artist gets a little too rough and handsy with her, so she kills him with a knife. Not only that, but her husband--a police detective--is assigned to the case and finds evidence that quickly suggests that his wife was there that night. When he tries to talk to her, they discover that someone ELSE knows she was in that artist's loft that night and expects something in return for keeping his trap shut. At nearly every stage, Hitchcock pulls one of those "we know, but the character doesn't" moves that, for some reason, still feel so novel and yet natural in his hands. We see Alice with the note from her secret lover when Frank goes to get her glove (the glove being a detail I foolishly assumed would be inconsequential). You also get the Blackmailer watching Alice and The Artist from across the street, his shadow climbing the wall as Alice flees the apartment.
Even nearly 100 years later, it's easy to see how this film put Hitchcock at the "top of the heap," as Michael Powell put it (he was a stills photographer on his film). The offers started rolling in for ol' Al, and the rest is history. Much like watching Charlie Chaplin's The Kid, it's a warm and fuzzy feeling when such an archaic piece of media can feel so timeless and so full of ideas, even with a century of copycats following its lead. Can't wait to dive even further into Hitchcock than I have already.
7.6/10
Starting Monday, I'm beginning a class on Alfred Hitchcock, so there will be lots of his films I'll be watching over the next few months. We're kicking it off with a very important film for ol' Al: Blackmail.
This was Hitchcock's first talkie. In fact, it was advertised as “The First British Talkie!” And all the while, the film was shot as though it were going to be a silent film. Only after filming did John Maxwell, the producer of the movie, set up a temporary sound stage with RCA equipment imported from America to do post-dubbing.
It's interesting knowing that now, after watching the film, because if I didn't know any better, I'd have said that Hitchcock was already well on his way to mastering the audio-visual medium altogether, based on Blackmail. The film moves with intelligent vigor and intentional, inspirational camerawork. I was keeping a mental track of the shots in this that surprised or impressed me, but then there became too many to remember by the one-hour mark. At every turn theres a fresh take on how to convey something.
When Alice is back home with her family, and the patron of the store keeps saying, "Knife... knife... knife... KNIFE!" as the camera creeps in on Alice's face, I was tilting my head, trying to think of any number of films and television shows that have borrowed that same setup. And the same goes for any number of other classic formal tropes that we all take for granted now. Of course, I can't say for certain that Hitchcock was inventing them on the spot or if they appear prior to this film, but to the best of MY knowledge, there are shots, transitions, compositions, etc, that I haven't seen in any films pre-1929.
And also, I don't want to forget the actual plot of this film, which is chock-full of all the trappings that we expect to see in a Hitchcock joint. You have a woman cheating on her husband to go up to some artists loft, only the artist gets a little too rough and handsy with her, so she kills him with a knife. Not only that, but her husband--a police detective--is assigned to the case and finds evidence that quickly suggests that his wife was there that night. When he tries to talk to her, they discover that someone ELSE knows she was in that artist's loft that night and expects something in return for keeping his trap shut. At nearly every stage, Hitchcock pulls one of those "we know, but the character doesn't" moves that, for some reason, still feel so novel and yet natural in his hands. We see Alice with the note from her secret lover when Frank goes to get her glove (the glove being a detail I foolishly assumed would be inconsequential). You also get the Blackmailer watching Alice and The Artist from across the street, his shadow climbing the wall as Alice flees the apartment.
Even nearly 100 years later, it's easy to see how this film put Hitchcock at the "top of the heap," as Michael Powell put it (he was a stills photographer on his film). The offers started rolling in for ol' Al, and the rest is history. Much like watching Charlie Chaplin's The Kid, it's a warm and fuzzy feeling when such an archaic piece of media can feel so timeless and so full of ideas, even with a century of copycats following its lead. Can't wait to dive even further into Hitchcock than I have already.
7.6/10
