Blackmail (1929)

(On DVD, March 2020) Considering that Alfred Hitchcock’s career started so early in the history of film that some cinema basics hadn’t even been figured out, it’s tougher than you’d expect to identify his “first” film. Is it The Pleasure Garden? Is it his first thriller The Lodger? Or maybe it’s Blackmail, not only his first sound film but the first one ever made in Great Britain. As one could expect from a film at the dawn of the sound age, it’s a bit of an odd duck—the film was reportedly retooled midway through to take into account that new crowd-pleasing sound technology, so it’s not a surprise to see a few title cards show up and the pacing drags in an attempt to show what that fancy new talking thing was. Even then, however, Blackmail has its share of clever touches: the central murder is shown tastefully, and the story is not bad considering what Hitchcock (who co-wrote the script) had to work with. A few of what would become Hitchcock’s trademarks also make their way into the film. This being said, let’s be clear: Blackmail is not worth picking up as a light evening’s entertainment: it remains a bit laborious to get through, and should be of more interest to Hitchcock fans and scholars of early sound cinema.