This film is part of Rentals

This film is certified

Contains mild violence and threat

I accept this guidance

Title of error

See Help

Blackmail

Alfred Hitchcock's first sound film sees a young woman blackmailed for a murder she was forced to commit.

Police drama 1929 82 mins Silent

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Rent for £3.50

Overview

A grocer's daughter kills a man who tries to sexually assault her. Her boyfriend, a policeman, attempts to cover up the murder. However, a small-time crook witnessed the act and threatens to blackmail the couple. Only Hitchcock's second crime film, Blackmail would sow the seeds for many of his masterpieces to come, including Vertigo (1958) and Psycho (1960).

Blackmail holds additional historical importance for being Britain's, as well as Hitchcock's, first feature-length sound film. Originally intended as a silent film, its producers asked Hitchcock to experiment with adding a sound finale (as adopted in The Jazz Singer [1927]). But the director surreptitiously shot the entire film in sound, re-shooting his dialogue scenes and famously enlisting Joan Barry to speak Anny Ondra's lines as she mouthed them, to mask Ondra's thick Czech accent. Blackmail was adapted by Charles Bennett from one of his own plays, in the first of a string of collaborations with Hitchcock during his early sound period.

Director

Alfred Hitchcock

Featuring

Anny Ondra , Sara Allgood and Charles Paton

Genres

Police drama

Certificate

Contains mild violence and threat

Country

United Kingdom

Language

English

Accessibility

Rent for £3.50

The Wicker Man The Wicker Man

Horror 1973 88 mins Director: Robin Hardy

Christopher Lee and Edward Woodward star in the folk horror classic about a policemen investigating an island given over to paganism.

Rent for £3.50

The Blue Lamp The Blue Lamp

Police drama 1950 85 mins Director: Basil Dearden

Dirk Bogarde stars as a loose-cannon crook with Dixon of Dock Green (Jack Warner) on his tail, in the classic Ealing policier.

Rent for £3.50

Loot Loot

Comedy 1971 102 mins Director: Silvio Narizzano

Silvio Narizzano adapts Joe Orton’s extraordinarily funny satire on police corruption and the conventions of detective fiction.

Rent for £3.50

Hell Is a City Hell Is a City

Police drama 1960 96 mins Director: Val Guest

Punchy crime thriller with a realist streak as Stanley Baker pursues a fugitive through the streets of Manchester.

Rent for £1.00

Wolcott Part 3 Wolcott Part 3

Police drama 1981 52 mins Director: Colin Bucksey

Continuing the gritty and ground-breaking drama featuring Britain’s first black TV detective.

Rent for £3.50

Sapphire Sapphire

Police drama 1959 92 mins Director: Basil Dearden

A young student with a secret is brutally murdered in this British Academy Award winning thriller about race, sex and jealousy.

Rent for £3.50

Orlando Orlando

Fantasy 1993 93 mins Director: Sally Potter

Tilda Swinton stars in Sally Potter's dazzling interpretation of Virginia Woolf's novel.

Currently unavailable

An American in Paris An American in Paris

Musical 1951 113 mins Director: Vincente Minnelli

Gene Kelly stars as a former GI turned bohemian artist, torn between two women in this exhilarating ride through the Gershwin songbook.

Currently unavailable

Casablanca Casablanca

Romance 1942 103 mins Director: Michael Curtiz

Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman star in the eternal story of love, loss and redemption; the ultimate testament to the brilliance of Golden Age Hollywood.