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Alfred Hitchcock had made nine silent films before Blackmail, and this thriller started production in 1929 as a silent film as well. In the middle of shooting, the producer, John Maxwell of British International Pictures, seeing the success of the American The Jazz Singer the previous year, asked Hitchcock to shoot part of the film as a talkie. While he only envisioned the last reel to be reshot this way, Hitchcock reshot practically the whole film with synchronized sound. Reshoots were done after the silent version was completed. Cameras and (cameramen) were confined to glass-fronted soundproof boxes so that the rattle of the rolling cameras was muffled. There are some plot differences between the two versions, while several scenes look the same in both movies. The first reel in both is the same -- the sound starts 6 ½ minutes into the film. The talkie was released two months earlier than the silent version, but that one made more money since most cinemas were not equipped for sound at the time. Even though it was ignored in subsequent years, some critics believe it is the superior one.

The film was based on Charles Bennett’s play of the same name which featured Tallulah Bankhead in the starring role on Broadway. Bennett and Hitchcock would collaborate on several more movies including The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), The 39 Steps (1935), Secret Agent (1936), Sabotage (1936) and Foreign Correspondent (1940).

The poster for the film breathlessly proclaims:

THE FIRST FULL LENGTH ALL TALKIE FILM MADE IN GREAT BRITAIN

SEE AND HEAR IT

OUR MOTHER TONGUE AS IT SHOULD BE – SPOKEN!

100% TALKIE

100% ENTERTAINMENT

HOLD EVERYTHING TILL YOU’VE HEARD THIS ONE!

Poster for Blackmail.

In the movie, Anny Ondra is Alice White, a shop-girl who is dating Scotland Yard detective Frank Webber, played by John Longden. The two quarrel in a teashop and she goes home with an artist, Mr. Crewe (Cyril Ritchard), who has invited her to see his studio. After some flirting, Crewe sexually assaults Alice and in self-defense, she stabs him. Distraught, she leaves the studio without her gloves. Webber is given the case, discovers Alice’s glove, and covers up the crime to protect his girlfriend. To complicate matters, she is then blackmailed by a man (Donald Calthrop) who says he saw her go up to the studio with the artist. He has her other glove.

Blackmail is considered the first British talkie with synchronized recorded sound as opposed to the “goat gland” sound films which were shot as silent films and had talkie sequences added after the shooting was completed. Czech star Ondra’s dialog was dubbed in the talkie as her accent was deemed unacceptable. Actress Joan Barry voiced her dialog off-camera into a microphone as Ondra mouthed her words during the scenes.

Over 90% of silent films made before 1929 have been lost, including some of Hitchcock’s early works. The Film Foundation, in partnership with the BFI National Archive, helped restore four silent films by Hitchcock, including both versions of Blackmail, as part of the BFI’s “Rescue the Hitchcock 9” program, completed in 2012. Principal restoration funding was provided by The Hollywood Foreign Press Association and The Film Foundation.

Film elements were scanned and restored digitally at 2K resolution and output back to 35mm film. BFI archivists completed a worldwide search for materials to examine as many existing copies of the films as possible. Some intertitles were reconstructed digitally, then returned to film and printed twice before being scanned and inserted into the digital master to give a filmic appearance to the new titles. The scans and restored data were preserved on data tape and 35mm restoration negatives were created for preservation and access.

The original camera negative was scanned at 4K resolution. Sections with the most severe damage were re-scanned with a wet-gate. Despite the significant curl of the film emulsion and delicate splices, a sharp scan with excellent tonal range was achieved, also allowing archivists to retain the film’s original intertitles.

Hitchcock’s talent for suspense and building tension is evident in this early work, and many scenes foreshadow classic moments in his later works. The struggle behind the bed curtains as Crewe tries to rape Alice flashes us forward to the shower scene in 1960’s Psycho. Alice’s groping for a knife out of her reach is reminiscent of Grace Kelly’s reaching for scissors in 1954’s Dial M for Murder. The scene of the denouement has a visual landmark, the British Museum, similar to the Statue of Liberty in Saboteur and Mount Rushmore in North by Northwest. Ondra was the first in a long line of blonde Hitchcock heroines in peril. And Hitchcock makes his signature cameo for the first time 10 minutes into the film as a passenger on the Underground bothered by a little boy. (He did make one in his The Lodger in 1926 – because of a shortage of extras – but he had his back to the camera.)

One of the best reviews Blackmail received was in the American newspaper The Bioscope, where the reviewer wrote: “We understand that Mr. Hitchcock began this production as a silent film and was then called upon to adapt his plans to meet the requirements of dialogue. He has certainly succeeded to admiration, for this is neither the mere adaptation of a stage play to the screen nor a silent film fitted with stage dialogue, and it may well be that Mr. Hitchcock has solved the problem of combining the two and helped towards assigning the true position of the sound film in the ranks of entertainment.”

The picture fell into the public domain as no one renewed the copyright. Therefore, a number of poor-quality versions of the film are available on VHS, DVD, and online, including on YouTube.

Blackmail was voted the best British film of 1929 in a poll of moviegoers. In a 1917 TimeOut poll, it was voted #59 in a list of best British

In 2014, I was offered the chance to make a film based on the taped conversations between Alfred Hitchcock and François Truffaut that became the basis of Truffaut’s indispensable book about Hitchcock, and I jumped at it. I transcribed all 27 hours of their conversations myself, which was thrilling. As for the films, I’d been deep into Hitchcock’s work since I was 13. So were my sons. When they were children, they loved North By Northwest so much that we re-enacted set-ups in a series of Polaroids we took around the Plaza Hotel and the UN. A little later, my older son figured out where Manny Balastrero lived in Queens and guided the three of us out there.

As luck would have it, my friend Bruce Goldstein—the world’s greatest film programmer—showed the complete works of Hitchcock and Truffaut at Film Forum here in New York right around the time I was researching. I’d seen pretty much everything but had saved a few titles—The Manxman, for instance, which is now my favorite of his silents. I also revisited a lot of films, including Hitchcock’s first sound film and the first one made in England, Blackmail, which I hadn’t seen in years—it’s one of seven Hitchcock titles that The Film Foundation has helped to restore. The Czech actress Anny Ondra starred in both The Manxman and Blackmail, made back to back, and she mouthed all of her dialogue as the actress Joan Barry spoke it into a microphone just off-camera—live dubbing! The use of voices and sound effects as rhythmic stops or counterpoints to enhance the emotions between the characters is absolutely stunning.

In reference to Blackmail, Hitchcock told Truffaut that there was “only one thing missing in the silent pictures, and that was sound coming out of the people’s mouths and sound coming from the streets. But it didn’t warrant the big change that sound brought in… there was no need to abandon the technique of the pure motion picture the way it was abandoned when sound came in.” And he added: “So many of the films made today are photographs of people talking.” The final remark is crucial, because his creativity with sound is as true of Notorious or Rear Window or Frenzy as it is of Blackmail. Truffaut recognized this understanding of the art form as the very secret of cinema, practiced by the directors who began during the silent era and passed on by example to future generations. There are many reasons that so many of Hitchcock’s films seem, as Bob Dylan said of the first Carter Family recording of “Wildwood Flower,” as fresh as a daisy. His consideration of sound as an ever-dynamic and expressive element, as opposed to a delivery system, is one of the most important.

- Kent Jones

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BLACKMAIL (1929, d. Alfred Hitchcock)
Restored by the BFI National Archive. Principal restoration funding provided by The Hollywood Foreign Press Association and The Film Foundation. Additional funding provided by Deluxe 142, Col & Karen Needham and the Dr Mortimer & Theresa Sackler Foundation.

When I was very young, the role of the film director seemed mysterious to me. I remember seeing and reading interviews with great directors and coming away with awe and admiration but very little clarity about what they actually did. At that time, you still routinely heard people claiming that cinema wasn’t a real art form because it involved so many people doing so many different things—this was predicated on the insanely ignorant assumption that everyone in every different job made their own decisions in a vacuum. It always struck me as nonsense, because the contrary evidence was right there in the films themselves (the new nonsense: that artistic ambition is beside the point). Take five titles on the list of over 800 films restored with the participation of The Film Foundation: Heaven Can Wait (1943), All About Eve (1950), Tunes of Glory (1960), America America (1963) and The King of Comedy (1982). Five great movies, each made at a different moment in film history under different conditions, but they share one thing: a fertile core that grows organically into a living presence, a being, with its own unique properties and mysteries. Artists have to strike a balance between holding on and letting go, tending the seed of the original sparking obsession and then letting it flower. That’s true of the entire process, and the old auteurist idea that the best film directors controlled and dictated absolutely everything and were capable of making a great movie out of the phone book is also pure nonsense. The reality is that a film director has to respond from morning to night to absolutely everything and everyone.

No good film director has ever chosen to work with anyone because they’re subservient. On the contrary, they want people on their team—Production Designer, Costume Designer, DP, Actors, Producer—who respond in turn, creatively and passionately, and who love what they do madly. Of course that goes for editors. Editing is one of the most wondrous aspects of moviemaking. The films I mentioned above were edited by Dorothy Spencer (Heaven Can Wait), Barbara McLean (All About Eve), Anne V. Coates (Tunes of Glory), Dede Allen (America America) and my friend of 30 years, Thelma Schoonmaker (The King of Comedy). These are all extraordinary artists. The appearance of more and more woman artists behind the camera is one of the greatest developments of the last 50 years in cinema. It’s also important to remember that women have played crucial roles in moviemaking from the very beginning. The combined credits of these five women will make your jaw drop, and the history of the cinema truly wouldn’t be what it is without them.

- Kent Jones

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HEAVEN CAN WAIT (1943, d. Ernst Lubitsch)
Restored by 20th Century Fox and the Academy Film Archive in collaboration with The Film Foundation.

ALL ABOUT EVE (1950, d. Joseph L. Mankiewicz)
Preserved by The Museum of Modern Art with funding provided by The Film Foundation. 

TUNES OF GLORY (1960, d. Ronald Neame)
Restored by the Academy Film Archive and The Film Foundation in collaboration with Janus Films and The Museum of Modern Art. Restoration funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.

AMERICA AMERICA (1963, d. Elia Kazan)
Preserved by Warner Bros. in association with UCLA Film & Television Archive. Preservation funding provided by Warner Bros., the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, and The Film Foundation.

THE KING OF COMEDY (1982, d. Martin Scorsese)
Restored in association with The Film Foundation, Regency Enterprises and Twentieth Century Fox.

Masterpieces by Michelangelo Antonioni, John Berry, Souleymane Cissé, Zoltán Fábri, Pietro Germi, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Shôhei Imamura, Hiroshi Inagaki, Fritz Lang, Sidney Lumet, Jean-Pierre Melville, Nikita Mikhalkov, Martin Scorsese

The final selection has been made for the films in the Venice Classics section of the 77th Venice International Film Festival, which this year will be hosted as part of the programme of the festival Il Cinema Ritrovato, promoted by the Cineteca di Bologna, which will take place from August 25th to 31st in Bologna. The collaboration between the two festivals is a concrete sign of the solidarity around us, showing that it is possible to overcome the difficulties of the moment by finding new and original ways of working together to emerge from the isolation provoked by the pandemic. This selection of Venice Classics 2020, to which new titles will be added, will then be screened in Venice in the following months.

The 77th Venice International Film Festival will be held on the Lido di Venezia from September 2nd to 12th, directed by Alberto Barbera.

Venice Classics is the section that since 2012 has presented, to growing acclaim, the world premiere screenings of a selection of the best classic film restorations completed over the past year by film libraries, cultural institutions and production companies from around the world. Venice Classics is curated by Alberto Barbera with the collaboration of Federico Gironi.

The following is the complete line-up of the restored films in the Venice Classics section selected for the 77th Venice Film Festival. They will be screened from August 25th to 31st at the Il Cinema Ritrovato festival in Bologna.

VENICE CLASSICS

CRONACA DI UN AMORE (CHRONICLE OF A LOVE)
by Michelangelo ANTONIONI (Italy, 1950, B/W)
restored by: Cineteca di Bologna

CLAUDINE
by John BERRY (USA, 1974, colour)
restored by: Fox/Criterion/Disney

DEN MUSO (THE YOUNG GIRL)
by Souleymane CISSÉ (Mali, 1975, colour)
restored by: Cinémathèque Française

UTÓSZEZON (LATE SEASON)
by Zoltán FÁBRI (Hungary, 1966, B/W)
restored by: Hungarian National Film Archive

SEDOTTA E ABBANDONATA (SEDUCED AND ABANDONED)
by Pietro GERMI (Italy, 1964, B/W)
restored by: Cineteca di Bologna

LA ÚLTIMA CENA (THE LAST SUPPER)
by Tomás GUTIÉRREZ ALEA (Cuba, 1976, colour)
restored by: Cineteca di Cuba

FUKUSHÛ SURU WA WARE NI ARI (VENGEANCE IS MINE)
by Shôhei IMAMURA (Japan, 1979, colour)
restored by: Shochiku

MUHOMATSU NO ISSHO (THE RICKSHAW MAN)
by Hiroshi INAGAKI (Japan, 1943, B/W)
restored by: Film Foundation/Kadokawa

YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE
by Fritz LANG (USA, 1937, B/W)
restored by: StudioCanal

SERPICO
by Sidney LUMET (USA, 1973, colour)
restored by: StudioCanal

LE CERCLE ROUGE
by Jean-Pierre MELVILLE (France, 1970, colour)
restored by: StudioCanal

NEOKONCHENNAYA PYESA DLYA MEKHANICHESKOGO PIANINO (UNFINISHED PIECE FOR THE PLAYER PIANO)
by Nikita MIKHALKOV (Soviet Union, 1977, colour)
restored by: Mosfilm

GOODFELLAS
by Martin SCORSESE (USA, 1990, colour)
restored by: Warner Bros.