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Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

Blackmail

1h 25m

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.

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