Directed by Alfred Hitchcock • 1929 • United Kindgom
Starring Anny Ondra, Sara Allgood, John Longden
Alfred Hitchcock’s—and Britain’s—first talkie finds the director using sound technology as inventively as he used the camera. Anny Ondra (prototype for the many Hitchcock blondes to come) plays the girlfriend of a Scotland Yard detective who kills her would-be attacker but then faces a new peril when a shady witness to the crime begins blackmailing her. It all climaxes in one of the director’s first great set pieces: a thrilling chase through the British Museum that inaugurated Hitch’s trademark use of iconic landmarks as backdrops for suspense.
Up Next in British Hitchcock
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Murder!
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock • 1930 • United Kingdom
Starring Herbert Marshall, Norah Baring, Phyllis KonstamOne of Alfred Hitchcock’s signature obsessions—the “wrong man” motif he would return to time and again—receives one of its earliest treatments in this innovative whodunit. After a you...
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Rich and Strange
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock • 1931 • United Kingdom
Starring Henry Kendall, Joan BarryTaking its all-too-appropriate title from “The Tempest,” this fascinatingly offbeat satiric drama concerns a stuck-in-a-rut young couple who, upon coming into a generous inheritance, immediately use the mo...
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The Man Who Knew Too Much
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock • 1934 • United Kingdom
Starring Peter Lorre, Leslie Banks, Edna BestAn ordinary British couple vacationing in Switzerland suddenly find themselves embroiled in a case of international intrigue when their daughter is kidnapped by spies plotting a political assassina...
