Rent Blackmail (1929)

Includes spoiler. - Blackmail review by Steve

The UK's first sound film is quite accomplished, using many aural motifs and effects, most famously the stabbing, wounding repetition of the word 'knife' emerging from the indistinct murmur of a longwinded busybody as the traumatised Anny Ondra cuts a slice of bread.

Hitchcock got round the beautiful Ms. Ondra's dense middle European accent by having Joan Barry stand next the the camera and speak as Ondra mouthed the words. Though Barry's cut glass received pronunciation sounds as much like the Cockney of the character as Anny's own voice. She plays a woman who kills in self defence but is blackmailed, while her detective boyfriend investigates the murder.

The film was based on a play by ongoing Hitch collaborator Charles Bennett, but only once gets mired in a long static scene of dialogue. It seems cool to prefer the silent version which was released into cinemas not fitted for sound (and which is considerably shorter). But I prefer the talkie, which after all is a landmark in British cinema. There is a fair amount of shared footage.

It's Hitchcock's most visually accomplished film to date, even given the impediment of sound. Unusually, the film concluded with the pursuit of the blackmailer, rather than the killer who walks away free.  That climax was first of the Master's to be staged at a widely recognised tourist site, the British Museum, and the hunted man wouldn't be the last Hitchcock villain to fall to his death.