This was Alfred Hitchcock’s, and England’s first talkie film. But because it was filmed as a silent, right at the time when sound came in, Hitchcock also did a sound version.
I saw the silent version, a wonderful, crisp and clean print. Every year the county library sponsors “Silents in the Cathedral” http://www.kssilentfilmfest.org/cathedral/index.html and they show, on the Friday before Halloween, a couple of shorts and a feature. The feature is usually suspenseful or spooky, while the shorts are comic.
A really good film. The murdered man, played by Cyril Ritchard, was an actor who I first saw as a kid on TV in the early 1960’s, opposite Mary Martin. He was Capt. Hook, and actually did scare me.
I think the acting all around in this film was good. Hitchcock, of course, did a cameo, as a man reading a paper on the train.
Some background info was given about the actress Anny Ondra. She had a long film career in Europe, but in English speaking countries her career ended with the sound era, because of her strong German accent. For the sound version of Blackmail an actress stood off camera to speak her lines for her, arguably the first dubbing in the movies. She married Max Schmeling, the famous German boxer in 1933, and the marriage lasted until her death in 1987.
Has anyone else here on the Dope seen this film?