Editorial Reviews Amazon.com Today, Blackmail is not as well known as Rear Window or Psycho, but it is one of Alfred Hitchcock's most important early films. Made in 1929 and advertised as the first British talking picture, it already contains many of its director's trademark touches. The film also experiments brilliantly with the new medium of sound. At a critical point, Hitchcock enters the mind of a young woman just after she has stabbed an assailant. Guilt-ridden, she returns home in time for breakfast and overhears a conversation in which the word "knife" is continually mentioned. In her consciousness, and on the soundtrack, "knife" grows louder with each repetition until the heroine can hear only that single word echoing accusingly.
With this little book, part of the British Film Institute's series on the classics of the international cinema, Tom Ryall discusses the aspects of Blackmail that would resonate throughout the director's career. He also offers an informative history of the British film industry's conversion to sound and the contributions Blackmail made to the new medium. Summing up his arguments, Ryall states that Blackmail "is a traditional film insofar as it provides a summary of conventional silent film style and narration; it is revolutionary, in its bold use of the novel techniques of sound; it is modern in its self-consciously 'artistic' mode of narration; and it is postmodern in its eclectic stylistic character. As well as being a key film in the history of sound pictures, it is also a landmark film in cinema generally." --Raphael Shargel Book Description Illustrated Alfred Hitchcock's Blackmail is a landmark in British cinema. Released in June 1929, it was hailed as "the first British all-talkie film." Characteristically, Hitchcock makes flamboyant use of the new technical and aesthetic opportunities that sound offered. But the film was also released in a silent version, and to this day some critics consider this version a superior work. In his lucid and knowledgeable discussion, Tom Ryall covers both versions of the film. It is, he argues, both a considerable work of art in itself, and also one of the first to display those touches we now think of as typically Hitchcockian: a blonde heroine in jeopardy, a surprise killing, some brilliantly manipulated suspense, and a last-reel chase around a familiar public landmark (in this case the British Museum). There's also a cameo appearance by the director himself, as a harassed traveller on the London Underground. Blackmail (Bfi Film Classics)
Blackmail (Bfi Film Classics),Tom Ryall,University of California Press,0851703569,Blackmail (Motion picture),Cinema/Film: Book,Evaluation,Film & Video - History & Criticism,History and criticism,Individual Directors And Producers,Motion picture plays,Motion pictures,Pop Arts / Pop Culture
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