Concerto for the conscience… Blackmail (1929), Saffron Hall with Timothy Brock, BBC Symphony Orchestra

When the Hitchcock Nine restorations were premiered through 2012 this is one I managed to miss – the big one! The film was screened with a full orchestra playing Neil Brand’s score at the British Museum but I was on holiday… I thought about cancelling, but, you know…

Anyway, patience is its own reward, especially if a second chance comes your way, which is why I set off in search of Saffron Walden (no, you can’t really turn straight off the M11, you need to go via Stansted Mountfitchet… or at least print out a map Paul!) to see the film being screened with Timothy Brock conducting the mighty BBC Symphony Orchestra in playing Mr Brand’s score and… I don’t think things could have been any better at the Museum.

Impressive, isn't it?

Saffron Hall is a purpose-built concert hall tacked onto Saffron Walden County High School; it has a generous stage with more than enough room for an 80 plus piece orchestra, excellent acoustics – we were wrapped in sound – and very comfy chairs. We kicked back and re-watched Blackmail in a new context as Anny Ondra’s gaze drew us in once more.

  

Blackmail shows how massively an evening can go wrong and how anyone can be dragged into a new world in an instant - a world that floods your very being with the sickness of guilt and the dread of consequence. It is also clearly about desire – Miss Ondra is at the centre of almost the whole story – and the danger of following you primal heart too far, as Cyril Ritchard’s character, the artist Mr Crewe, finds out.

Every aspect of Alice's life is changed...

It is also a morally open film that challenges the audience to adjust their expectations even 86 years after release – we’re all guilty and complicit by the end with the director putting us all in the picture. 

We root for Anny’s character Alice White (see what he did..?) and we hope she and her policeman Frank (John Longden) will find themselves after the twist of hate that leaves the more clearly-defined bad-guy, Mr Tracy, the blackmailer of the title, conveniently in the frame. But the ending is purposefully ambiguous – you can escape “justice”, even get away with murder but in the end, the characters will judge themselves and each other. That much is clear when Frank’s previously supportive hand, drifts slowly away from Alice’s hand…

Tracy applies the pressure...

The restoration is of course superb leaving the images as spic and span as when they were first projected and from our vantage point we were eye-level with the sequence of marvelous location shots, close-ups and interplays that make this film one of Hitchcock’s most visually pleasing. Everything that was to come is pretty much in this film and it is one of the most disciplined of British silent films that almost needs no titles cards to explain itself.

All of which has been a gift to Neil Brand  and his composition manages to amplify the film’s emotional content whilst carefully under-scoring the narrative by matching the director’s pacing. There are powerful Herrmann chords and huge emotional shifts that well up in tune with the tears at the corner of Anny’s eyes. There are also interjections that sum up the re-assuring, yet humorous presence of a policeman even in the moments leading up to Alice’s crisis. These details are the essence of Hitchcock’s very British appeal and Neil obviously knows him very well!

Music and role-play what could possibly go wrong?

Timothy Brock’s orchestration brings out the full flavour of Brand’s score and the orchestra was simply irresistible creating that unique meld of sound and vision that can make silent film the most truly immersive of all cinema – yes, even without IMAX, 3D and maximum volume. It is “hot media” alright calling on the instinctive 90% of our communication that does not rely on spoken words and filling that missing 10% with a sweet overload of sounds in sympathy.

Donald Calthrop

This succeeds in adding flavour to the expression on view with great performances brought into new focus. Cyril Ritchard’s artist is a typically-nuanced creation: was he intending to go all the way with Alice, maybe not at first but certainly after she’d put on the ballet dress and subsequently re-buffed him. Even in these desperate moments we still expect him to back down and to be the gentleman he appeared to be.

Donald Calthrop’s Tracy is a mean man, preying on the vulnerable and living off other’s misfortune. Nothing will prevent him from trying to take advantage of Alice and Frank’s situation and yet when the tables are turned his own fear is brought to the surface, bringing out Alice’s compassion even when it may cost her dearly.

John Longden

John Longden’s Detective Frank Webber, is all action in the opening sequence and appears to be pure metropolitan police blue-blooded. He’s dedicated to his work and often leaves his girlfriend Alice waiting, she is seeking more adventure and dumps him for the artist and yet he is still willing to help. Doubts appear at the end making Frank feel even more real.

But it’s really all about Anny as Alice runs the full gamut from bored tease to a girl who will fight for her life and then condemn her own actions: she was well-brought up in that news agent! We saw it all and as a modern audience have no doubt it was self-defence but how did contemporary audiences feel. Perhaps the clue is on Anny’s face as she walks out of the police station at the end: eyes glazed and in a daze.

Anny...

Hitchcock’s later films were more specifically about blood and horror here the fear is so much more effective for being contained: there is no blood, just repeated images of the knife, knives, the dead man’s hand resonating in others' hands: Alice is haunted by her actions and we can only hope Fred or someone else will help relieve her burden.

Blackmail is available but, frustratingly and unlike The Lodger, the restored version has not yet been released. As with that film it really does deserve a dual-disc release with Neil and Timothy’s music on it. OK, who’s in charge? When do we start the petition!?

Love versus duty… Blackmail (1929) at the BFI with Cyrus Gabrysch

“Hitchcock is one of the greatest inventors of form in the entire history of cinema.  …an entire moral universe has been elaborated on the basis of this form and by its very rigour.” Eric Rhomer and Claude Chabrol

Alfred Hitchcock’s most famous silent film is pretty much the last of the BFI restorations I’ve seen* and I still regret missing last year’s gala showing at the British Museum (up a mountain in Wales at the time). Tonight the restoration was shown with piano accompaniment from Cyrus Gabrysch who did this sparkling, intense, invention full justice.


Hitchcock’s last silent film was also, cleverly, his first sound film or “part-talkie”. He planned out both versions in pre-production and rather than have to over-lay sound after shooting he was prepared, with, for example, Anny Ondra’s Polish tones being replaced by the voice of Joan Barry who spoke her lines live on set, just off-camera. Blackmail therefore avoided the stilted pitfalls of many early talkies whilst at the same time it remaining one of the most accomplished British silent films and certainly one of the best of the “Hitchcock Nine”.

John Longden, Anny Ondra and Donald Calthrop

The silent film on show is not improved by sporadic sound effects and voices – it is one of Hitchcock’s most intensely dramatic tales and, along with The Lodger, best represents the style of film he spent most of his career refining.

Blackmail was adapted from Charles Bennett’s play of 1928 by Hitchcock along with Benn W. Levy and with some help from Bennett (Michael Powell also later claimed responsibility for the setting of the grand finale**).  The “vision” was entirely Hitchcock’s own from the flashing drinks ad at Piccadilly that mutates to show stabbing  knives – Alice White’s guilty obsession – to the guest appearance as “man harassed by young child on tube”.

The flying squad

The film starts with a police van surging through the London traffic and the restored film makes this window on our grandparents’ world that much clearer: street spotting reveals more as they race around the West End.

This chase mirrors one later in the film when the seemingly inexorable “process of the law” is in full swing and here we see two policemen relenetlessly closing in on a miserable looking suspect in a squalid flat.

Harvey Braban and John Longden

One of the “peelers” on patrol is Detective Frank Webber (John Longden) who is now late to meet up with his sweetheart Alice White (Anny Ondra) who is less than impressed at his tardiness (and more besides). They head off for supper at Lyons’ Corner House and after just about grabbing a table, the full extent of her discontent is revealed.

Alice has had another offer from a man who turns out to be an artist called Mr. Crewe (Cyril Ritchard) who arrives just as she is giving poor Frank the brush-off. Crewe joins Alice and the two walk out much to the jilted copper’s dismay as he glances back...

We feel for Frank at his girl’s callous double-dealing but Alice’s night has only just begun.

Alice thinks she can do better...

She and Crewe head out to his apartment where he has promised to show her his studio (oh yeah, pull the other one sonny…)… on the door step, Crewe has to speak to a man who has seemingly been waiting for him: an unsettling foretaste of what is to come.

Alice and Crewe walk up the stairs, followed flight by flight by the camera tracking their guilty progress to an inappropriate encounter.

The scene of the crime

Once in Crewe’s studio Alice loses herself in fascination of his other-wordly life, her eye being caught by his painting of a jester, who appears to laugh straight at the viewer’s gaze. She makes a few brush-strokes of her own and Crewe holds her as he completes them. Then Alice tries on a ballerina’s costume and Crewe says how much he would like to paint her…

There is no doubt that Alice is deeply intrigued by Crewe but whether she can cross the boundary of perceived good behaviour is another thing. The painter becomes increasingly emboldened and proceeds to try and take hold of what he thinks is being offered.

Alice's world is about to turn...

It’s a misunderstanding, perhaps, but Crewe cannot hold himself back... in her panic Alice grabs hold of a bread knife and strikes him down… All happens off-camera, behind a curtain leaving the struggle to the viewer’s imagination – still horribly effective.

Alice reels in shock and driven by instinct starts to cover her tracks… Ondra is quite amazing during these scenes, her face a blank mask of disbelief at her own reactions: someone who had never suspected that they could kill.

Alice is literally out of focus as she arrives home...

Alice escapes home to her parents humble newsagents round the corner just in time to be greeted by the morning comfort of her mother (Sara Allgood) bringing her tea in bed. Breakfast normality is swiftly dissolved as her father (Charles Patton) talks of the killing…

Things are about to get worse, as Frank has been put on the case and in examining the murder scene finds one of Alice’s gloves just before he turns to recognise the murdered man… He knows that Alice was with him but does he yet suspect the full extent of her involvement?

Home comfort fades...

He arrives at the newsagent and manages to return the glove to Alice: is he being loyal or opportunist? Either way a crucial third party enters the mix as the man who was waiting for Crewe arrives knowing far too much about the events.

Donald Calthrop is superb as the subtle blackmailer Tracy, so controlled when he has the upper hand but with a quicksilver shift to fright once the tables begin to turn. He enjoys the dominance his spying has bought him and gets the couple to buy him a fancy cigar and make his breakfast.

Keeping watch: Donald Calthrop

All the while we sense that Alice is nursing her guilt and preparing herself to take her punishment and yet Frank gets in the way. Curious that the policemen should be the one obstructing justice or does he see beyond to the probably circumstances of the killing: self-defence? Why is he so keen to defend this woman who had previously dumped him - can love overcome duty?

Hitchcock keeps up the suspense and the narrative moves along quickly and uncomfortably… We have to make our own judgement over whether Alice deserves or wants to “get away with it” and whether she will or not is always in doubt. Suspenseful and intense, Blackmail is the first great sustained instance of the magic Hitchcock formula.

Inside the museum... sort of.

Of course, Anny Ondra is ideally suited to conveying what Charles Barr highlights as the intense “interior qualities” of the narrative – a rare capability especially when combined with her startling features. What could she have gone on to achieve had her accent been as tame-able as Garbo’s?

Anny Ondra

The restored print is of course excellent and far better than watching the existing murky DVDs… The BFI were able to use the original negatives with a good deal of technical re-working. The print clarity also shows up the director’s use of back projections as well as the Schüfftan process which involved shooting against scale miniatures for the Museum scenes – not so impressive in this digital age perhaps but a real break-through in terms of showing characters in situ.

When the re-release happens I hope they include the sound film for comparison as well as Neil Brand's super score which went down so well at least year’s restoration premier. That’s not to say that Mr Gabrysch didn’t do a very fine job of accompanying Mr Hicthcock’s darkest silent hour (and 17 minutes… )  with his energetic classical lines seamlessly blending with the ebb and flow of the drama.

 
*Just Easy Virtue to go…
 
**Michael Powell took still photographs on the film whilst Ronald Neame operated the clapperboard...  both went on to direct a few films of their own.