Blackmail

Movie Information

In Brief: Alfred Hitchcock's first talkie may not be the best remembered of his early works, but it certainly deserves more attention than it gets. Blackmail (1929) bears many of the visual and narrative flourishes that would come to define Hitchcock's auteurial signature in later years — from his morbid gallows humor and propensity for cinematic innovation to a dramatic third act set piece in the British Museum that presaged the famed Mount Rushmore sequence at the climax of North by Northwest. The plot is squarely in the Hitchcockian wheelhouse, based on a play by Night of the Demon screenwriter Charles Bennett and written by Hitchcock with Benn Levy (The Old Dark House) and an uncredited Michael Powell (Peeping Tom), Blackmail is easily among the most accomplished of Hitchcock'e British films.
Score:

Genre: Thriller
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Starring: Anny Ondra, Cyril Ritchard, John Longden, Donald Calthrop, Sara Allgood, Charles Patton, Hannah Jones, Harvey Braban, Phyllis Konstam
Rated: NR

The Asheville Film Society will screen Blackmail on Tuesday, May 23, at 7:30 p.m. at The Grail Moviehouse, hosted by Xpress movie critic Scott Douglas.

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