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Alice (Anny Ondra) is engaged to Frank (John Longden), a Scotland Yard
detective ... yet she feels drawn to Crewe (Cyril Ritchard), an artist
living in her neighbourhood, and one day, she actually creates a rowe with
Frank out of the blue to get rid of him and go home with Crewe ... which
Frank finds out though. In Crewe's appartment though, things turn a tad
nasty when he tries to rape her, and in self defense, seh stabs him. Faced
with the corpse, Alice can't but run away, but in no time at all, her
guilty consience has caught up with her, as she walks through life almost
shell-shocked. Frank is among the detectives investigating Crewe's
murder, and of course, he recognizes the corpse at once as the man Alice
went home with - and he finds one of her gloves at the scene of the crime
... but decides to cover up for his fiancée and thus withholds crucial
evidence. Eventually, Frank meets up with Alice at her parents' (Sara
Allgood, Charles Paton) shop to talk to her - but they are soon
interrupted by one Mr Tracy (Donald Calthrop), a witness to the crime who
has evidence in his possession to link Alice to it - but instead of just
reporting it to the police, he tries to blackmail Frank and Alice. Then
things take an unexpected turn though when police finds evidence of Tracy
having been at the crime scene, and suddenly he finds himeslf on the run,
and, while trying to evade the police in the British Museum, he falls to
his death ... and case closed - but not for Alice, whose guilty consicence
has gotten the better of her, and she wants to confess everything to the
Chief Inspector (Harry Braban), but somehow is left in the hands of Frank
after all, who quickly dissuades her from turning herself in - leaving her
to suffer from her guilt for the rest of her life. Considering
that this was the very first talkie of British cinema, this film is quite
amazing on a technical level: expert use is made of sound, music and
songs, the movie isn't in the least bit stagey (unlike so many other early
talkies) despite the fact that it was based on a stageplay, and the film
finds a perfect balance between images and sound, not putting the emphasis
on one over the other. For that accomplishment alone, Alfred Hitchcock
deserves to be called the best British director of his time. Yet the
film is far from perfect: Its whole (rather feeble) setup takes up more
than half an hour of the film's 85 minutes running time, Tracy's hasty
getaway doesn't make too much sense in the light of the film's events,
leading lady Anny Ondra (whose voice was reportedly dubbed by another
actress) isn't powerful enough an actress to carry the film over rough
patches, and as a result, the ending lacks the dramatic impact it would
have deserved. That all said, the film is by no means bad either, it
does feature some nice setpieces, first and foremost the chase through the
British Museum, does feature enough immoral plottwists to prevent it from
becoming a production line melodrama, and once it has shifted into gear
(which is roughly at the time of the murder) it's a strong piece of
suspense cinema. It's just that Blackmail, despite its historical
significance, is far from being a perfect film.
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