Becoming Hitchcock: The Legacy of Blackmail (2024)

 

An intelligent and interesting (if somewhat rambling) documentary about Hitchcock's first talkie (Blackmail (1929)). 

This film is at its best when it focuses on Blackmail itself. This documentary offers great critical insight on Hitchcock's first talkie. Director and writer Laurent Bouzereau (who has directed many DVD special features for Stevn Spielberg films as well as documentaries about Natalie Wood, Faye Dunaway and John Williams) does a great job of examining how Blackmail fits into Hitch's larger filmography including themes that would appear in many of Hitch's other films. He also provides a great look at how Hitch approached sound in these early years. How he experimented with sound and used it in more abstract ways that conveyed the emotional state of the characters in a way that goes beyond the words being said. It also talks about how Hitch kept his vision of pure cinema (a story that is told through visual storytelling rather than through dialogue), while moving into talkies. In many ways parts of Blackmail feel like a silent film and these scenes are discussed in great detail here. This film also argues that Blackmail is the movie that solidified who Alfred Hitchcock would become as a filmmaker. This is an arguable point but one that this documentary argues very convincingly. Like any good film criticism this documentary often offers a different way of looking at a film that many of us have seen many times. You may not always agree with what it is saying but it is always easy to understand where each point comes from. 

Two versions of Blackmail were made. One of them was silent and one was a talkie. Some of the most fascinating scenes in this documentary are the ones that discuss the differences between these two versions. I especially appreciate when clips from each version would be shown back-to-back so we can view the differences for ourselves. 

This documentary may focus more on its film criticism than the history of Blackmail. However, that is not to say that it is void of any information. There is little here that longtime Hitchcock scholars don't already know but newcomers and causal fans will learn a lot. 

This documentary does have its flaws though. One is that it rambles a bit much. For a documentary about Blackmail, this film does spend a bit too much time discussing Hitch's other movies. I appreciate that this movie talks about the reoccurring themes that would also appear in other Hitchcock films. However, the discussions about this should have been kept to a briefer length. When talking about how food is used in Hitch's films, Bouzereau goes on a long tangent listing many examples, when just a couple would have sufficed. I also find that Elvis Mitchell's narration can come off as too academic and dry. It is true that Hitch's films are brilliant works of art that will continue to be analyzed and discussed for as long as film criticism exists. However, this does not change that Hitch viewed himself first and foremost as an entertainer and this kind of dry narration simply does not fit the type of filmmaker Hitchcock was. 

While far from perfect this is a smart documentary that works as a well-made piece of film criticism.

- Michael J. Ruhland 

The Blackguard (1925)

 

For The Blackguard, producer Michael Balcon sent to director Graham Cutts and art director, assistant director and writer Alfred Hitchcock to Berlin. This made this the first film for the British Gainsborough studio that was made aboard. That this was made in Germany was not just a coincidence. Balcon had been talking to Hitch about studying the production methods of the UFA studio, which made many of Germany's best films of the time. The Blackguard would in fact be a co-production with UFA. 

This film's story takes place during the Russian Revolution. It involves a violinist, who falls in love with a Russian princess and must save her from execution.

 This film is a pure visual treat. The sets, lighting and cinematography are truly wonderful. There is much about these elements that owe a debt to German films of the time (including those that are often referred to as "German Expressionism") and these visual elements hold up just as well here as they do in the best German films of the era. The visuals here not only look great, but they create an incredibly effective atmosphere. Like in the best "German Expressionism" films the visuals draw us into the movie instantly. There is a bit of abstract feel to them, while at the same time never to the point where it makes anything seem any less than real. The crowd scenes here also do a lot to making this movie feel larger than life.

Unfortunately the storyline was the same type of sappy romantic melodrama as many of the films Hitch worked on at this period. Many of the plot points feel so over the top and melodramatic (a fault just as much of the source material (a 1923 novel by Raymond Paton) as the actual film) that it is hard to take much of it seriously. Unfortunately, this movie takes itself very seriously. What makes the story kind of work though is that the male hero is quite likable (he may not be a complex character, but he is likable) and the entire cast provides good performances.

Like the previous films that Alfred Hitchcock worked on, this movie would star an American actress. For this film that American actress would be Jane Novak. Despite not being well remembered today, Novak played opposite such major movie stars as William S. Hart, Tom Mix, Alan Hale, Wallace Beery and Lewis Stone. During the silent era she was a major movie star herself and was one of the earliest movie stars to be paid a four-figure salary for one film. By time she started making talkies she was no longer as the big star she had been. However, she would appear intermittently throughout the talkie era. One of these appearances was in Hitchcock's film, Foreign Correspondent (1940) for which she had a small uncredited role. Her leading man here was German actor Walter Rilla. A very prolific actor Rilla would continue working in films and TV shows through the 1970's. This movie also marked the final film appearance of German actress, Dora Bergner.
 

Writing the intertitles for this film was Adrian Brunel. Brunel would become a director himself directing such films as The Constant Nymph (1928, featuring Alfred Hitchcock's future wife Alma Reville as one of the writers) and The Invader (1936, starring Buster Keaton). 

Dover Express, 1925

 Hull Daily Mail, 1926

Lichfield Mercury, 1926

Derby Daily Telegraph, 1925

Below is a short 1925 article about this film. If you have trouble reading it click on the image below and use your touch screen to zoom in. If you don't have a touch screen, click here.

The following is a review that George T. Pardy wrote for Motion Picture News, "A TRIFLE slow in getting started, but once this picture striker-its gait it maintains fast action to the finish and provides virile entertainment. The early sequences are devoted to showing the formation of the young hero's character and the influence upon him of a hallucination caused by an injury to his head, whereby he is dominated by a vision of a music-god, Maliol, who promises him success as a violinist, so long as he confines his affections to his art. He really wins through hard work, but the Maliol idea rules him so sternly that the woman he loves, Princess Marie, is led to share his belief. The big thrills come during the revolution, when he risks all to save Marie, and the mob scenes, the fight with Levenski and escape from the burning palace are staged with tremendous spectacular effect. Jane Novak and Walter Rilla do excellent work in the leading roles and are well supported. Photography A-1."

Working on a film in UFA in Germany would end up playing an important role in Hitch's development as a filmmaker. It was here he was able to witness the great German director F.W. Murnau (best known today for directing Nosferatu (1922)) directing The Last Laugh (1924). Hitch would later remember the profound influence this experience had on him. Hitch stated in his famous book long interview with Francios Truffaut, "I made a silent film, The Farmer's Wife, a play that as all dialogue, but we tried to avoid using titles and, whenever possible, to use the pictorial expression instead. I suppose that the only film made without any titles at all was The Last Laugh, with Emil Jannings. ... They were making it was I worked at UFA. In that film Murnau tried to establish a universal language by using a kind of Esperanto. All the street signs, the posters, the shop signs, were in this synthetic language." Truffaut corrected him stating, "Well some of the signs in Emil Jannings' house were in German, but those in the Grand Hotel were in this Esperanto." Hitch would mention The Last Laugh in an article (entitled If I Were Head of a Production Company and written by Hitch himself) that appeared in the magazine, Picturegoer (in an issue dated January 26, 1935), "UFA built a whole city-center for The Last Laugh. The expanse would have been justified for that fine film alone; but the set was used for years afterwards." Being without intertitles, The Last Laugh is one of the most exemplary examples of what Alfred Hitchcock would later refer to as pure cinema. This is a type of cinema that tells it stories in a visual way without relying too heavily on dialogue (or intertitles).     

The Blackguard is available to watch on YouTube below. 

-Michael J. Ruhland

Resources Used

Hitchcock Truffaut by Francois Truffaut

Hitchcock on Hitchcock edited by Sidney Gottlieb

https://britishsilentfilmfestival.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/the-blackguard.pdf

http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/1422989/index.html

https://mediahistoryproject.org/

https://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/The_Blackguard_(1925)