Blackmail

Hitchcock, BIP, 1929, from Charles Bennett's play. Alice White (Anny Ondra) kills a man who assaults her. Her detective boyfriend covers it. A petty crook saw her leave. BFI calls this Hitchcock's and Britain's first full-length sound film; a silent cut went out for houses that had no speakers. Ondra's Czech accent was judged wrong for a London grocer's daughter, so Joan Barry spoke the lines off camera while Ondra mouthed them. The breakfast table turns the word "knife" into a weapon. The chase ends in the British Museum.