#silent version

Bela Lugosi & Helen Chandler in Dracula | 1931 | dir. Tod Browning

"Hank Curtis cabin. Within a stone throw of the dance hall"

Charlie Chaplin narrating the 1942 reissue of “The Gold Rush”. Until 2013 the casual Chaplin fan was most likely only aware of this version.

Lon Chaney as The Phantom Of The Opera

Watercolors on Paper

While I much prefer the silent version of “The Gold Rush”released 1925, some of his narration in the 1942 re-issue was brilliant…this scene:

Alfred Hitchcock's move into sound film proved immensely successful both with the critics and with the financial bean counters, but with the new technology still in its infancy, not all cinemas were properly equipped to exhibit this new feast for the eyes and ears. Since Blackmail was such a successful film, British International Pictures financiers did not want to lose the extra potential revenue from the screens not equipped to show the film so Hitchcock was asked to hastily assemble an alternative silent version of the film for exhibition in more modest facilities. This is not unusual even today: with each new advancement in film exhibition, theatre's slowly gather the proper equipment for showcasing the new technology; this has been seen with DTS, Digital 3D, and IMAX most recently. Eventually, all cinemas would be able to play sound to their audiences, but in 1929, speakers and audio equipment were expensive and largely unnecessary since so many films were still being produced silently. Hitchcock's sound version of Blackmail is considered the canonical version of the film in the Master's filmography, and is the version most easily accessible on home video (and even the web) in most countries around the world. The silent version was produced solely for less fortunate cinemas, and has now been mostly forgotten as a redundancy, or at best, a mere curiosity. Some fortunate film fans who have seen the silent version however, claim that the silent version is superior to the more often seen sound version. Unfortunately for most North American Hitchcock fans, the silent version can only be obtained legally on a Region 2 German import DVD. I ordered that very DVD and was forced to watch it on my laptop since my DVD player would not support the Region 2 coding (Hitchcock fans, it really is more trouble than it's worth!), and after watching the silent version of Blackmail, I must disagree with the opinions that it bests the talkie, but there are certainly a number of intriguing revelations that come from a comparison of the two versions.

The first several minutes are largely identical since even the sound version opens with an extended silent sequence, but the differences become apparent soon enough. That same shattering window sound effect that sounded so invasive to silent cinema in the talkie version leaves the viewer feeling like there is something eerily absent in this truly silent version (no sound effects or spoken dialogue). The title cards do not begin until when the characters begin talking in the talkie version, and so the interruption of the silent action with two detectives suddenly on break and talking is not as jarring or effective. What is effective, however, is the essentialism of the storytelling. The film employs title cards sparely and only puts on the screen the most essential pieces of dialogue. This makes the tension in Alice and Frank's relationship much clearer in the silent version. A title card that says "I've been waiting half an hour" makes it clear that Alice feels Frank is more interested in his work than with her, whereas the sound version inundates a listener with a constant flow of extraneous dialogue, making it more difficult to hone in on the specifics of the story. Sound film has lost the essentialism that silent film had and viewers may have a harder time paying close attention to dialogue when it washes over them wave after wave.

Another specific of the narrative through title cards in the silent version seems to give the film a slightly different vibe than the sound version. The sound version is somewhat vague regarding Frank's beliefs about his girlfriend's involvement with the murder. He finds her glove and tries to suppress it but he certainly seems to suspect Alice of the crime. When she comes to Scotland Yard at the conclusion, she defends her actions to Frank by explaining how the artist tried to rape her and she acted in self-defense. The silent version, on the other hand, makes it seem clearly as if Frank never suspected in the least that Alice had committed the murder but only thought from her glove that she had been at the apartment and was in danger of being wrongfully accused. At the film's conclusion, she simply confesses to him without justifying her actions at all, and the two walk bleakly out of the office. The complex moral dilemmas presented in the more nuanced character development in the sound version is lost to the simplicity of characters with more clearly defined beliefs.

Visually, there are some striking differences between the two versions as well, which is no surprise since Hitch reshot a large portion of the film once he received the green light to make it into a talkie. The suspense scene in the artist's apartment leading up to the murder is one of the most glaringly divergent scenes. You can view an excerpt of that scene from the silent version on YouTube. Most notable, the scene plays faster, omitting the artist's piano playing and singing altogether. This confirms the song's existence in the sound version merely as an exploitation of the sound technology which was not uncommon during the birth of the talkies (many early sound films featured unnecessary songs). That being said, the silent version does seem somewhat less suspenseful; the artist is no longer coy and playful, which makes him seem all the more menacing; now he is simply and obviously sinister, which makes him somewhat less convincing and somehow less frightening. I should mention here (since I forgot in the sound version post) that Hitchcock used a neat little trick here as an homage to silent film villains, and this trick appears both in the sound and silent versions. Hitch told Francois Truffaut that stereotypical silent film villains had long curly mustaches, and so here Hitch placed an elaborate chandelier at the top of the room from which he artfully casts a shadow on the artist's face making it appear as if he has a mustache. The effect is an interesting use of shadow that allows an approachable looking young man to suddenly appear malevolent. We see a similarly creative use of shadow later in the film (again present in both versions, and again something I failed to mention in the last post) after Alice has finished writing her confession letter: she stands up from her chair and the shadow of the window frame casts a noose like shadow around her neck. This creative use of shadow is yet another technique of the German Expressionist movement, from which Hitch borrows heavily.

Back to the silent version specifically, another strikingly different scene is the breakfast table scene during which the sound version gave us a clever expressionist use of sound in which Alice could only hear the word "knife" surrounded by incomprehensible mumbles. Obviously, no such use of sound is employed in the silent version of the film, but the scene is retained. In this version, the scene is, not surprisingly, much more visual. There are a couple of title cards referring to "knives," but more interestingly, Alice is taunted by remarks from her father such as "Cut some bread, Alice," and "You ought to be more careful with knives, Alice" (a creepy instance of dramatic irony). There is one strikingly different shot exclusive to the silent version, again employing the expressionist use of shadow, in which Alice reaches timidly for the breadknife on the table, and we see the long black shadows of her fingers crawl across the blade, suggesting that even Alice has a sinister (or shadowy) side which embraces the blade, while her pale white hand hovers nearly a foot above it, afraid to touch it. The visual element is one of the most successful deviations from the sound version, and may have served well in the sound version, but alas, it remains exclusive to the seldom seen silent version.

There are a few other different visual cues that were totally unnecessary in the sound version: Frank now makes the call to Scotland Yard in the shop rather than receiving it, and we see the shop's door bell vibrating through insert shots now when customers enter the shop rather than hearing the noise, for example. Some insert shots in the silent version that actually do enhance the story and would have also been appreciated in the sound version are included as well: the newspaper that Tracy taunts Frank and Alice with in the shop is now shown in close-up and can actually be read; it reads, "CHELSEA MURDER POLICE SEARCH FOR CLUE." Similarly, when the artist's landlady is being questioned by Scotland Yard, and ask her if she "wrote this," the sound version gives us no indication what "this" is or what information it contains, but an insert shot exclusive to the silent version reveals a handwritten note from the landlady which implicates Mr. Tracy at the scene of the crime the night of the murder. This makes it easier to understand why Scotland Yard suddenly marks Tracy as a lead suspect and pursue him through the British Museum.

Ultimately, the sound version is the version first released in cinemas, the version Hitchcock intended to be seen, and the superior version of the film. However, the silent Blackmail offers enough variety, including occasionally more successful choices, that both are certainly worth viewing and comparing in order to get a more complete picture of both the film's narrative and the complicated history surrounding its production and the state of the film industry at the end of the 1920s. Unfortunately, until a company like the Criterion Collection picks up Blackmail and releases both versions in North America, many Hitchcock fans will have to settle for poor prints of the sound version alone.