Blackmail

Tom Ryall

• Publisher: British Film Institute
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781838714529
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

Alfred Hitchcock's Blackmail (1929) was the first major British sound film. Tom Ryall examines its unusual production history, and places it in the context of Hitchcock's other British films of the period. Is is, Ryall argues, both a considerable work of art in itself, and also one of the first to display those touches we now think of as typically Hitchcockian: a blonde heroine in jeopardy, a surprise killing, some brilliantly manipulated suspense, and a last-reel chase around a familiar public landmark (in this case, the British Museum). There's also a cameo appearance by the director himself, as a harassed traveller on the London Underground.

'BLACKMAIL': A CRITICAL ANALYSIS

Blackmail opens on a vertiginous image of a spinning hub cap which is to draw the audience into the familiar Hitchcockian nightmare world of sex and violence, killing and deception. The opening sequence, which runs for around ten minutes, delays the onset of the central fictional concern and oscillates between a sort of documentary on police procedures and an action picture of a police chase. Although Blackmail was heralded as Britain's first talkie, the opening eschews dialogue in favour of expository inserts of messages, door signs and so on. This is partly due to the film's hybrid origins as both a silent and a sound picture; other early British talkies also withheld the dialogue until well into the film to highlight the moment of its arrival.

The opening sequence leading to the arrest

The opening sequence is a compendium of the art of the silent film. The spinning hub cap gives way to a number of shots of a speeding lorry, including a subjective travelling shot as the lorry hurtles through the streets of London. Interwoven shots from inside the lorry show the radio equipment being used by the police. The montage of images and the musical soundtrack convey an urgency which is underscored by a graphic insert showing the address of the suspect: in the manner of a silent film, the single insert shot makes clear what the images suggest. As we move further into the sequence, Hitchcock deploys various styles of presentation that derive from key silent film traditions. The lorry arrives at the suspect's home and as the police approach his room, the stylistic reference is the German silent cinema. In a series of close shots, the policemen's faces are crossed by narrow shadows, their threatening presence and the sense of tension conveyed by expressionist framing and lighting. As the scene develops, there is a complex interplay of point-of-view shots which owes more to the classical silent cinema technique of cross-cutting to create suspense. The sequence continues with the interrogation of the suspect at New Scotland Yard, the protracted timescale conveyed in pure silent cinema terms with a shot of an ashtray containing a single cigarette dissolving into a shot of the ashtray filled with several cigarette butts. The arrested man is locked in a cell, his imprisonment similarly rendered in a series of close-ups of significant detail together with some explanatory 'title' shots - a door bearing the word 'cells', a document which outlines the identification parade procedure, and so on. The events are constructed from a range of small details according to the rules of narrative construction in the silent cinema codified by such theorists as Pudovkin.

Hitchcock's résumé of silent narrative techniques can also be seen as a skilful documentary-style sequence. The careful exposition of the mechanics of detection, especially the detail of the wireless equipment which guides the police to their quarry, gives way to an equally detailed presentation of the procedures of arrest and imprisonment, with documentary-style attention given to finger-printing, 'mug' shots and the identification parade. The documentary aspect is also present in the arrest itself, with the seedy context of criminal life, the drab environment in which the suspect lives, presented with considerable 'realistic' detail. The police are shown arriving at an archway through which we see men hanging around talking, children playing and a horse and cart. The images are full of residual detail, elements which simply serve to provide a surface authenticity, a palpable feel of the real world. A subsequent image shows the children playing together and women talking as they hang out washing and clean windows.

Images such as these have little to do with the progress of the narrative and can be regarded as an attempt to create the social context from which the criminal emerges. In addition, there is a hint of sympathy with the criminal when a stone is hurled at the police through the window of his room. A social commentary is sandwiched between the cold, objective 'documentary' presentation of the chase and the interrogation and imprisonment. It was elements such as these which caught the attention of John Grierson and Lindsay Anderson. Grierson referred to Hitchcock as 'the only English director who can put the English poor on the screen with any verisimilitude',⁸⁴ while Anderson was impressed by the director's 'conscientious realism . . . of locales and characters.⁸⁵ As Raymond Durgnat was later to comment on these realist vignettes:

. . . it must be remembered that realism in the '30s was a rarer and more difficult achievement, that the director couldn't just point a TV camera in the street. He had first to notice certain details, love them enough to remember and recreate them, and lastly to slide them deftly into the thriller context.⁸⁶

Documentary-style openings had become a feature of Hitchcock's early films. The openings of The Lodger (1926), The Ring (1927) and The Manxman (1928) are like brief documentaries about the dissemination of dramatic news, fairground life and the fishing industry respectively. The verisimilitude was not confined to the criminal environment. The police headquarters constructed in the BIP studios was 'a very carefully and authentically reconstructed replica of the anteroom and corridors of Scotland Yard as it is today', according to P. L. Mannock, Studio Correspondent of Kine Weekly. Mannock had escorted Major General Sir Wyndham Childs, ex-head of the CID, around the set of Blackmail and, as he reported, 'His observant eye detected hardly any discrepancy from the original and he identified his own room almost before we arrived by Jack Cox's camera. The attention to detail impressed him very favourably...'⁸⁷

For all its documentary flavour, the opening sequence does include characters subsequently identified in the narrative. In particular, Frank Webber (John Longden), one of the arresting officers, has a key role as the boyfriend of the central character, Alice White (Anny Ondra), although he is not singled out here in any specific way. Hitchcock's original idea for the film revolved round the simple notion of a conflict between love and duty; as he wrote a few years after the film's release, the 'hazy pattern one saw beforehand was duty - love - love versus duty - and finally either duty or love.'⁸⁸ What he wanted to stress in the opening reel was the general theme of duty, with the policemen simply going about their business in a detached manner.

I showed the arrest of a criminal by Scotland Yard detectives, and tried to make it as concrete and detailed as I could. You even saw the detectives take the man to the lavatory to wash his hands - nothing exciting, just the routine of duty.⁸⁹

Having established 'duty', the film next establishes 'love', although in a tense and turbulent way, in the sequence where Frank meets Alice and takes her to a Lyons Corner House. In fact, Hitchcock's plan was to play with these themes and to end the film with Alice's arrest and a repeat of the opening, this time with Frank putting his girlfriend through the procedures of arrest, interrogation and imprisonment. Duty would be seen to triumph over love, giving the film a satisfying formal symmetry with the ending replying to the beginning in a manner which many critics see as typical of classical cinema. Hitchcock did not get his way entirely because the producers considered such an ending too downbeat for audiences. However, the film does return to New Scotland Yard at the end, with Alice's arrest for murder at least a possibility.

With the arrested man behind bars, Frank goes off duty and meets Alice, who is waiting for him at the police station entrance. Frank is late and Alice is edgy with him whilst sharing a private joke with the policeman on the door. She laughs with the policeman and frowns at Frank almost simultaneously, creating a slight tension between them which prepares the ground for their subsequent argument in the café. By this point dialogue has been introduced, but although Alice does petulantly complain to Frank for keeping her waiting the atmosphere between them owes more to Anny Ondra's repertoire of gestures than to what she actually says. As they leave the station to walk to the underground, a line of slowly marching policemen crosses between them and the camera - a slightly disturbing and distracting image at this point.

A single-shot set-up of an underground train ride moves the narrative on in conventional fashion as Frank and Alice start their evening out. Conventional, that is, apart from one key element: it is here that Hitchcock makes his own appearance in the film. It was not his first screen appearance, but it is one in which he does a little more than simply cross the screen or act as an extra in a crowd. As Maurice Yacowar has pointed out, Hitchcock is privileged in the mise en scène and photographed facing the camera with the principal characters in profile. He is trying to read a book, but a little boy pulls his hat over his ears whilst he remonstrates with the boy's mother. Such appearances were of course to become Hitchcock's artistic trademark, though they are usually restricted to walk-ons.

The next sequence takes place in a Lyons Corner House, and again Hitchcock sought authenticity by shooting some of the sequence on location in London's West End at the Lyons Corner House in Coventry Street. The scene, which is quite long, develops the acrimony between Frank and Alice and ends on her fateful departure with the artist Crewe (Cyril Ritchard). In marked contrast to the fluidity of the opening sequences, the dining room scene almost slows the film to a halt with lengthy takes of the conversation between Frank and Alice. It is here that we can see the impact of dialogue shooting on scenic construction in these early days of the talkies. The scene is made up of twenty shots and lasts just over four and a half minutes. The dominant impression is one of 'photographs of people talking',⁹⁰ and an analysis of the sequence confirms this. Almost three and a half minutes of screen time are taken up by four shots of Frank and Alice in a profile two-shot at the table. The remaining minute or so contains sixteen shots, all quite brief, including shots of the couple walking to the table, an insert of Alice's note from her artist friend, and the exchange of 'meaningful' close-ups when he arrives to keep their rendezvous.

The fluid cross-cutting of these close-ups contrasts with the somewhat static set-up which characterises most of the sequence. Early sound recording techniques meant that synchronised dialogue had to be recorded simultaneously with the image and - before t...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• The Sound Revolution?
• British International Pictures
• The Production of'Blackmail'
• 'Blackmail': A Critical History
• 'Blackmail': A Critical Analysis
• A Landmark Film
• Notes
• Credits
• Bibliography
• eCopyright