Compelling first offering from Hitchcock. Sets the tone of his obseverances of the dark side of human emotions. Don't let the first few minutes turn you off...
This is one of Britain's first talkies...audio is added.
The acting is superb, subject is timeless. Look into the actor's eyes, stay there awhile.
I turned out the lights, TV off, put myself in the theater.....
Hitchcock was a genius.

An excellent example of silent film. Watch the movie with the sound turned off and the drama is compelling. The music is classic scoring for a silent motion picture theater presentation. For silent pictures, the music score was sent along with the film for a piano or a small orchestra to preform during the screening. It is fascinating how the movie starts as a silent film with only music until about the eight minute mark when the detectives started talking about what they were going to do after work. I was startled when they started talking.
The film was in the can when the new recording system became available. The movie was remastered to include the sound track so the dialog was essentially invented after the movie went into production. Today screen plays are mostly dialog with visualization. In "silent pictures" it was all visualization. The transition to sound reminds me of "The Wizard of Oz" when the black and white transitions to full Technicolor when they arrive in the land of Oz. Where would the yellow brick road have been in black and white?
The acting and scene setup comes from the conventions of silent film. Anny Ondra is stunning. The acting is filled with many inventive "bits" that give added detail which brings the story to life. Like the bit with the blackmailer's fork when he was eating breakfast. The exaggerated gestures and expressions convey depth and intensity that is generally carried by audio in current film. Something was lost in the migration to talking pictures.
The film has a few continuity problems. How did the blackmailer get into the taxi during his escape? It had good pace and editing, but was slow in some scenes. A few flaws that in no way diminish this young Hitchcock Masterpiece. It is a snapshot of a bygone era.
I highly recommend this movie -- Rumi

I was not aware of the lip-synch, but it did not distract from my enjoyment of this film. I wanted to see this because it is listed among the "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die". It is a worthy entry. The lead actress was wonderful. This movie was full of special touches, such as when she roams the streets after the murder, and we see trick photgraphy which gives the illusion of dozens of people rushing past her, instead of just a few; the climbing down the rope of the villian past the giant sculptured face, etc. I'm sure that Cyril Ritchard was in other things, but I will always remember him as Captain Hook! I would have rated the movie higher, but the sound quality was a little disconcerting to me, too (although I know it was the first talkie in England).

Let me say I do enjoy a good Hitchcock production. And this may have made a fine example as a silent film, but with the soundtrack I find it a disaster. The lip-syncing of the main actress being the most glaring fault. Perhaps if every character was voiced that way it wouldn't be so jarring? And maybe I should be more forgiving with a first foray into sound, but I find it difficult to be pulled into the movie.

Blackmail is of course best known as Alfred Hitchcock's first talking movie. Obviously, being an early attempt at talking pictures, the film's sound would be considered very unpolished by anyone's standards even during that era. Things like car horns, tweeting birds, etc. are overdone to the point of being somewhat of a nuisance at times. And the accent of Czech actress, Anny Ondra, was thought to be too thick for a talking movie, so she mouthed her lines while English actress, Joan Barry read them into a microphone off screen.The film stars Ondra as Alice White, a young and coy woman in her mid twenties who, after flirting with artist/playboy Mr. Crewe (portrayed by Cyril Ritchard in excellent form), finds that her flirtatiousness has placed her in serious jeopardy. A situation arises in which Scotland Yard is called in, and who should show up on the scene but Alice's boyfriend (who she had a slight run-in with the day before) Detective Frank Webber played by John Longden. The blackmail comes in when a vagabond by the name of Tracy, played by Donald Calthrop, who is the only witness with any information on the crime tries to extort money from Frank and Alice. The rest of the film plays out as might be expected, at least in certain ways, yet Hitchcock gives us a somewhat unexpected ending that focuses our attention not on bad guys getting their comeuppance, nor on the prevalence of justice. Rather we're left with a certain pathos that causes us to feel Alice's own remorse accompanied by Frank's mercy toward her, and that mercy comes by way of the old adage that some things in this world are best left unsaid.Also of note in this film is the presence of Sara Allgood who plays Alice's mother. Her time onscreen is short, but we get to see a early sampling of the expressive face, heartfelt emotions, and larger than life image she would be known for in later roles such as that of the family matriarch in How Green Was My Valley (for which she was Oscar nominated).

Alfred Hitchcock can be easily seen on a bus in the movie being pestered by a child.

Hitchcock filmed this as a silent movie, but sound films came in during production and he did it also as a talkie version. Both were big hits.This print appears to start with the former and end with the latter.The actress ~Anny Ondra ~ had a thick Czech accent, so a British actress, Joan Barry, was speaking her lines offscreen, as the lead starlet merely mimed the dialogue. At 23:55 the actor almost accidentally calls her by her real name "Ann", saying: "Draw something A...", but catches himself and finishes the line "A...lice."The result is surreal, but not ineffective, and, since sound had just come in, who could tell how mouths and voices were supposed to look on screen?The start of many iconic Hitchcock themes and visual which reached their pinnancle in "The 39 Steps".