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Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Alfred Hitchcock's first talkie is an intriguing film, not entirely successful but still more enjoyable than some of the other films Hitch made around this time. The story starts with a woman cheating on her boyfriend, a Scotland Yard detective. When the man she's with tries to rape her, she kills him in self-defense. Afterwards a criminal who pieces it together blackmails her and her detective boyfriend.A little creaky but that's to be expected under the circumstances. The film started out being made as a silent before it was decided to turn it into a sound picture. In spots it reverts back to a silent (without intertitles). This actually works in the film's favor. There are some really nicely done lengthy sequences with no dialogue, such as her walk home after she's killed the guy, punctuated by a scream. Good acting all around. Nice direction from Hitch. The museum climax is excellent; an early example of the defining set pieces that would become a Hitchcock trademark. Definitely worth a look if you're a fan. Or even if you're not, provided you enjoy pictures from this period. Not everyone does, unfortunately.

Originally conceived as a silent film, but finally released as one of Britain's first "talkies", Alfred Hitchcock's "Blackmail" is based on a stage-play by Charles Bennet. Both film and play find a young woman accused of murder."Blackmail" benefits from its origins as a silent film. Whilst some passages contain strategically added or overdubbed dialogue, for the most part the film is wordless, and contains many sequences which rely on stark visuals and clever editing. The visual sophistication of Hitchcock's best films tends to be a direct result of his work on early hybrid films like "Blackmail", which forced the director to develop a filmic language which was, and remains, fairly unique.Other Hitchcock traits are here: adorable blonde heroines (Anny Ondra), a Kafkaesque plot, chase sequences, blackmail, rape, murder, untrustworthy Scotland Yard detectives and a shaky romantic relationship which is interrupted by much murder and excitement.Significantly, one of Hitchcock's last act sequences, in which our heroes stroll down a Scotland Yard corridor, plays like a perverse wedding march. The film isn't only deeply suspicious of police and authority, but of all men, who seem preoccupied with both silencing and reshaping women. Our poor heroine is herself both punished for being raped, and made to feel guilty about it. This has led to many labelling Hitch a misogynist who indulges in sadistic fantasies against women, though in "Blackmail's" case, we're clearly positioned to sympathise with poor Anny Ondra.Anny's character, Alice White, is herself not a typical damsel in distress. She's headstrong, and even a bit vindictive. Note that she knowingly constructs a plot so that Frank, her self-obsessed boyfriend, gets jealous. Frank, who is a police detective and who loves murder mysteries, himself seems to be a precursor to both Jimmy Stewart's self-absorbed husband in Hitchcock's "The Man Who Knew Too Much", and the murder mystery loving men of "Shadow of a Doubt", who "know everything" yet can't spot a murderer in their midsts."Blackmail" contains Hitchcock's longest cameo (he's accosted on a train by a rowdy kid) and opens with a longer, nearly ten minute sequence in which police officers track down and arrest a suspected criminal. Filmed in a quasi-documentary style, and opening symbolically with a spinning wheel, this sequence informs everything which comes later, though only in hindsight do we realise this. For when we learn that "Blackmail" has ended with a criminal case being wrongly closed, we begin to reappraise Hitchcock's opening sequence. Was the right man arrested? Is he blackmailed into guilt? And more importantly, is Alice's resistance to rigid, masculinist authority similarly futile?Hitchcock's films often deal with the suppression of a woman's voice and the denial of female subjectivity. This is most literally seen in "The Man Who Knew Too Much", in which a singer has been effectively silenced by her husband. A similar situation takes place in "Blackmail". The film, itself a silent film which refused to remain quiet, is supposedly about trying to keep a man silent (paying off a blackmailer), yet it is the heroine who spends over a third of the film speechless. Even when Alice finally speaks, Frank repeatedly urges her to shut up. Elsewhere Hitchcock constructs a scene in which our heroine's image and speech are subtly controlled by an artist. Here Alice draws a face on a large board which may be either male or female. The artist, controlling her hand, then adds a sexualised female body. Alice accepts this image, and toys with the idea of giving the image a sexy dress. She is then literally raped by the artist, an act which foreshadows the subtext of Hitchcock's "Vertigo".Just as the artist does not concede Alice control of her image or validity to her speech, Frank also tries to suppress Alice. "Don't interfere," he constantly says. He may be on Alice's side, but visually Hitchcock continually links Frank to the film's blackmailers and rapists; oppressive forces, continually pushing Alice to the edges of the frame, all attempting to exert control over her sexuality.Interestingly, Anny Ondra is herself an actress with a heavy Czech accent and so who is "not allowed to speak". Like most actresses during the silent film era, she was chosen because of her striking, exotic looks. Her voice was then dubbed with that of a British actress, essentially creating Hitchcock's idea of what a woman should be; correct in appearance, correct in accent and correct in relation to cultural and economic demands. She may be a reproduction, a composite made up from several sources, but the intended result is a singular, unified object.The dubbing of actresses like Anny is what writer Rick Altman would call "sound cinema's ventriloquism." "Sound and image have a complementary relationship," he says, "whereby sound uses the image to mask its own actions and vice versa. The two are locked in a dialectic where each is alternately master and slave to the other. Through this illusion of wholeness, untainted by the scandal of a mechanical source, the myth of cinema's unity, and thus that of the spectator is perpetuated." Whilst it is highly unlikely that Hitchcock saw his films in these terms, it is also true that his films were preoccupied with men controlling and even outright "building" women. Of, like Altman says, "removing" in order to create a "desirable image".Even before "Blackmail" was completed, Hitchcock knew the era of silent films had ended. "I did a funny thing in that scene, a sort of farewell to silent pictures," he would say of "Blackmail". "On the silent screen the villain was generally a man with a moustache. Well, my villain was clean-shaved, but an ironwork chandelier in his studio cast a shadow on his upper lip that suggested an absolutely fierce-looking moustache." In other words, the villain now no longer needs props and moustaches to convey villainy. He now has access to speech.8/10 – Worth one viewing.

The first British feature film to be shot with sound (although a silent version also exists), Blackmail is a landmark moment in the career of Alfred Hitchcock. The film is extremely primitive-looking now, inevitably so given its age, but marks an important evolution in cinematic technique. Hitchcock creates some incredible shots and a cleverly unsettling mood here, all very typical of the things we'd come to expect of him as his career developed. Had Blackmail been a bad film it would probably have spelt the end of Hitch's career and we would never have had his subsequent classics to enjoy time and again. Luckily, it's not a bad film… in fact it's a pretty damned good one, more interesting to film buffs and historians to be sure, but still a striking little offering for those curious about this sort of thing.Alice White (Anny Ondra) is a quiet, unassuming shopkeeper's daughter. She is involved in an on-and-off relationship with a dedicated local detective, Frank Webber (John Longden), but is also keeping her options open by dating a mysterious artist (Cyril Ritchard) who lodges in a flat close to her father's shop. One evening, following an argument with Frank, Alice meets up with her artist friend. She allows herself to be persuaded up to his flat, but things turn ugly and the artist attempts to rape her. In panic, she stabs him and kills him. Now a killer with a whole heap of guilty secrets hidden away behind her sweetly innocent looks, Alice struggles to hold herself together as the entire neighbourhood gossips and speculates about the terrible murder that has rocked their little world. Frank – ironically assigned to the murder investigation – quickly realises that Alice is guilty but refuses to turn her in. Things become very sticky indeed though when a slimy opportunist, Tracy (Donald Calthrop), reveals that he also knows about Alice's secret and attempts to blackmail her.Ondra is brilliant as the central character, her performance capturing every subtle nuance of the young girl who goes from homely sweetheart to guilt-ridden killer in one swish of a blade. It's a shame that the introduction of sound effectively ended her acting career (her thick accent and unattractive voice is dubbed here, but ultimately film-makers couldn't be bothered dubbing her all the time, and this stopped her from receiving roles once sound cinema became the norm). She really can act, though, and it is sad indeed that she never got to do more. Hitchcock allows some scenes to drag on and within a few years his approach to editing became much sharper. One must remember that in many ways this is an experimental film, a gutsy leap into the unknown, and for a first attempt at a sound movie (both for the director and for British film overall) it's a pretty assured opener. There might not be a huge audience for a film like Blackmail any more, but for those who care this is a very worthwhile landmark movie.

Back in 1929, when all the Brits were saying "I Say.." before each sentence (Erasure even named an album after that custom), talkies were just coming into fashion. Hitchcock, when he finished his new film, "Blackmail", reshot some key scenes with sound, dubbed some, and so here we have Britain's first talkie. It's actually a bit thin plot wise, but that can be forgiven because this so amazingly shot you don't realize the plot doesn't really kick in until 3/4 of the way through. Anny Ondra, whoever she is, is quite amazing and amazingly beautiful as the protagonist, who's one night affair turns deadly. Hitchcock plays around with the shot structure a lot, for the benefit of all of us, and this is a lot of fun to watch.