FILM 2200 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: The Microphones, German Expressionism, British Film Institute
Document Summary
Blackmail is a 1929 british thriller drama film directed by alfred hitchcock and starring. Based on the play blackmail by charles bennett, the film is about a london woman who kills a man when he tries to rape her. After starting production as a silent film, british international pictures decided to convert. A silent version was released for theatres not equipped for sound (at 6740 feet), with the sound version (7136 feet) released at the same time. As an early talkie, the film is frequently cited by film historians as a landmark film, and is often cited as the first truly british all-talkie feature film. People never thought of silent films as silent films because they had music playing simultaneously. However when sound films (talkies) were invented, that is when the term silent cinema" was coined. Hollywood and other industries had invested a lot of money on the technology for silent cinema.
