- Alfred Hitchcock's Blackmail doesn't really hit its stride until one of its characters is killed. One can imagine that Hitchcock's macabre sense of humor might have appreciated such a statement, yet the same criticism cannot be leveled at most of his later, better films. One immediately thinks of Psycho, for example, in which Marion Crane's story is quite compelling before she meets her fate. Rear Window, too, is an immensely engrossing experience long before any crimes are witnessed. Blackmail, on the other hand, has to march through some rather dull territory before getting to a worthwhile destination. Thankfully, death finally arrives.
- The death that propels the film forward is that of a Mr. Crewe (Cyril Ritchard), a smarmy artist who attempts to sexually assault the flirtatious Alice White (Anny Ondra). Alice fortunately finds herself within reach of a knife and kills Crewe in self-defense, but how is she going to explain this situation to her rather obtuse boyfriend, Detective Frank Webber (John Longden)? Alice is obviously no murderer, and she numbly wanders through the city all night, haunted by imagined imagery of her crime. Things are so bad that she even memorably flinches at the sight of a knife at the next morning's breakfast. Eventually, she is confronted in a phone booth by Frank, who found one of Alice's gloves while investigating Crewe's apartment. Before the two of them can decide how best to proceed, however, an interloper arrives.
- It seems that a man named Tracy (Donald Calthrop) has overheard the unhappy couple and can provide additional evidence of Alice's guilt, in the form of a second glove. As he wryly points out, "detectives in glass houses shouldn't wave clues." Initially, he pushes this advantage for rather small favors, like cigars and breakfast, but it's clear that Tracy has no intention of stopping there. Gradually, this becomes a contest of wills. Does Tracy have the guts to continue blackmailing the couple, or is his criminal record sufficient to cast aspersions on his story, implicating the blackmailer himself? Tracy slowly realizes that the latter case applies and flees--where else?--to the British Museum, where he accidentally becomes part of the permanent collection.
- While Blackmail is still a very primitive film, and was in fact amongst the earliest of the British sound films, several of Hitchcock's themes have now begun to manifest themselves. For example, I've already noted that Alice is tormented by visions of her crime, and it probably goes without saying that she is blonde. Moreover, this film features the first of Hitchcock's many chase scenes set in famous locations. One way that Blackmail differs from his later work, however, is that Alice really did kill Crewe but was never accused, wrongfully or otherwise. While it would be improper to accuse her of murder, I was a bit unimpressed that the truth of the matter never really came out. In his famous set of interviews with Francois Truffaut, Hitchcock describes his imagined ending to the film, in which "the girl would have been arrested and the young man would have had to do the same things to her that we saw at the beginning: handcuffs, booking at the police station, and so on." Now that would have been a memorable ending.
- Hitchcock shows up on the train, being pestered by a small child.
- According to wikipedia, Anny Ondra went on to marry Max Schmeling. Incidentally, her voice was completely dubbed in this film.
- In the British Museum scenes, Hitchcock uses something called the "Schufftan process" to superimpose actors in scenery.
