This is immediately noteworthy not just for being Hitchcock’s first talkie but also the first ever British talkie, though that’s not the only reason for my having such a tidy breakpoint between the last Hitchcock review and this one. I would’ve probably got to this sooner were it not for there being a scene (the “Knife!” scene, no less) from the silent version on the DVD I have (in the Early Hitchcock set). The scene is so equally effective the way Hitchcock did it silently that I simply had to track down a copy of the full silent version before going any further in watching and rewatching his work.

The thing is, Hitchcock didn’t just adopt sound in his pictures willy-nilly, as easy as that might have been for him to do. Abandoning none of his learned knack for the visual, Hitchcock said much over the years of his approach to the sound component of his cinema. If he was going to have sound in his movies, it would have to contribute something and take nothing away. Just as I noted his limited use of title cards in his earlier silent work, using them only when the image didn’t say plenty, he only has his characters speak here when they have something to say.

Often the sound will even say the complete opposite of what we see, further showing how far ahead of the game Hitchcock was in his use of it. The rapist that initiates Anny Ondra’s troubles in the movie sings a perfectly jaunty song as he makes his advances. When the (still shocking now, let alone in the late Twenties) murder occurs, Hitchcock pulls the sound out entirely using silence, not sound, to enhance the suspense. And then there’s that much talked about knife scene when he simply crowns himself the master of sound, as a woman babbles on about her opinion of the murder, but the only discernible word in her dialogue is “knife” to the wild irritation of Ondra.

But as I say, the film works just as well without the sound. The story concerns Ondra’s character who finds herself subject to the blackmail of the title after someone witnesses her leaving the scene of a crime that had her murder a young artist in self-defense after he tried to rape her (this isn’t spoilers, it all happens in the first 20 minutes or so). Through all of this Hitchcock is simply brimming with visual ideas. A cunning early shot has the blackmailer see police enter his home through a tiny shaving mirror in the corner. A man is arrested and there’s a perfect dissolve from his mugshot to his fingerprint. As Ondra goes up to the rapist’s studio, we get a full cutaway view of them ascending the staircase. And as Ondra wanders the streets of London following the fateful scene, there’s all manner of tricks, including one of my faves as a neon sign advertising a cocktail shaker metamorphoses into a stabbing knife. But the best one was new to me on this viewing: an arresting visual where a the shadow of a window frame crosses Ondra’s neck like a noose as she rises, having just written a note of confession, that tells us all we need to know about her character’s genuine remorse. In the silent version of the famous “Knife!” scene, by the way, the jolting break in the scene comes, ironically, from the ringing of the shop’s doorbell. Hitchcock simply cuts to the bell ringing, and I swear you can practically hear it.

This was one of the first Hitchcock movies I saw at a time when I hadn’t seen that many old movies, let alone early talkies. It was an instant fave then and remains so now. It was fascinating to discover that the original silent version worked so well this time, though. Clearly the sound version is the one to watch, but the comparison is a fascinating one I recommend to anyone interested in this kind of thing. With a blonde central heroine and a climax at famous landmark (the British Museum), not to mention the downright dangerous framing of that blonde as a kind of anti-heroine, I feel this one is even more like the “first true Hitchcock” than The Lodger was. In any case, it’s a must see.