Sep. 17, 2010

In class this week we watched a film that had a lot of elements we have no seen up to this point in Hitchcock's work. The main element not seen before this film was the use of sound. Blackmail was made first as a silent film, and then converted into sound after it was completed. As mentioned in class, this is something that Hitchcock planned for, as he saw that there was a potential for the need to convert the film before it was even done. We will touch on this a little bit later, but this goes to show how brilliant of a director Hitchcock truly was.

As taught in class, the film was completed and Hitchcock went back to add the sound to the film. All things considered, it was actually done pretty well considering much of it was voice over work. Recalling that this film was done in 1929, and the technology that was around during this time, its amazing that such a feet was even able to be done.

The first few sequences in the film remained silent, even in its final version after this sound was added. Knowing Hitchcock, there was a reason this was done, but unfortunately I am not versed enough in his works to even contemplate why he did it this way. To me it seemed more like he ran out of time getting all the sound added and that particular part of the movie did not need sound like the other parts of the movie did. There were no sound effects, there were no footsteps, there was nothing. I legitimately thought, as I was watching, that our teacher may have mistakenly picked up the wrong copy of the film, and we were watching the silent version. Eventually the sound came on, and off we went with the sound version. It took a little while to get accustomed to the voice over work but before I knew it i had settled in and did not even notice it.

As the movie progressed and the plot was laid out, it was different from the other films we have viewed. Alice, the protagonist, finds herself in an awkward situation. She is invited over to a man's house and he tells her he will draw her. After a little back and forth, she changes into a cocktail dress (I believe thats what it was) and he begins to advance on her, and if he would have continued in his path, she would have been raped by the man. At this point, we see something new to the Hitchcock film's we have seen. Instead of the woman being killed at some point in the movie, Alice, by sheer protection kills this man. Quite the twist from what we are used to.

(As a side note, one thing I did notice in the scene where Alice kills the man, she uses a bread knife. Although we do not see her actually stab the man, it is easily concluded that is the outcome. After, we focus on the knife, which she just used to kill him. Bloodless. Nothing on the knife at all. This may be something they weren't allowed to do films during this time, but I did find it off that the knife that was just used to kill someone was as clean afterwards as it was freshly removed from the bread.)

The part of the movie that is not out of the norm for Hitchcock's styling is that act that after Alice kill this man, once a strong confident women, turns timid and she is engulfed in the guilt she feels for killing this man, even though it was in self defense. The weakness of the female seems to be a more common occurrence for Hitchcock that the other way around. Alice timidly goes about her duties at the store/house she lives at, she cowers at pretty much everything that happens, and so on.

The topic for the response paper I did in regards to this film was on the fact that Alice's boyfriend, Frank, who is the detective on the case to find the person who killed this man took an the dominant male role, much like we are used to seeing in Hitchcock films.

Not in relation to the dominant, if not over-bearing male, but to the reaction that Frank had when he figured out that Alice was the one who killed the artist, is what I identified with the most in this film. As this was discovered, Frank automatically went into protection mode ad did almost everything he could to protect and make Alice safe. I might not get to the point of pinning a murder on an innocent person, but the instinct I have to protect the ones I love is strong, much like Frank showed toward Alice in her situation. This is something that I feel Hitchcock had an extraordinary ability to do, was to catch the essence of human interaction in some of the most simple ways and magnified them in his films.

One thing that I am not shy about admitting, is my excitement for moving out of the silent films and into the ones with sounds. I mean, really. It is almost a reason to celebrate.