Chantage

Britain's first talkie, the 1929 "Blackmail," is directed by Alfred Hitchock, and even back then, it has many of his touches. The stars are Anny Ondra, Cyril Ritchard, John Longden, and Sara Allgood.

A young woman (Ondra) two-times her Scotland Yard inspector boyfriend (Longden) and goes out with an artist (Ritchard). Things get rough in his apartment, and he forces himself on her. She kills him (a la Dial M for Murder). Her boyfriend finds her glove in the apartment and realizes she did it; the other glove was found by a criminal hanging around the artist's apartment building, and he decides to blackmail the inspector.

Hitchcock more than appears in this film; he has a bit with a little boy on a subway. The film is strange in that the beginning is silent with no title cards. Then suddenly, there is sound. It moves quite slowly, with not much in the way of action. The story builds slowly, and the scene in the artist's apartment is quite long before anything happens.

Nevertheless, the Hitchcock touches are there. A pivotal scene happens at the British Museum - Hitchcock's upheaval in familiar places. And in the jail scene, there's a sound the director often described as being terrifying in his childhood when his father had the local police teach him a lesson - the jail door closing.

The very pretty Ondra, wife of boxer Max Schmelling, is dubbed here. Ritchard in 1929 is not recognizable as Captain Hook.

Worth seeing - it's early Hitchcock and it's an 80-year-old movie. Mind-boggling.