Blackmail + introductory lecture 12A

We are delighted to welcome Geoff Brown, film historian and Research Fellow at DMU’s Cinema and TV History unit, who will introduce this rare public screening with an illustrated talk on Britain’s transition to sound, and launch his magnificent new book Silent to Sound: British Cinema in Transition.

When Anny Ondra’s naïve heroine agrees to go back to an artist’s studio, she little suspects the violence and torment lying ahead.

After making a silent version of the material in 1929, Alfred Hitchcock immediately pounced on newly available American sound technology to heighten its drama with synchronised dialogue and music. Britain’s first talkie feature remains endlessly fascinating, from its use of subjective sound and the dubbing of Ondra’s foreign-accented voice to the early presence of typical Hitchcock themes, with its woman in peril, trapped in a whirlpool of crime, punishment and guilt.