A Film Canon

It's extraordinary to see Hitchcock's distinctive cinematic vision emerge at such an early point in his career. With more effective dubbing, and a better integrated score (something early sound films often seem to lack), Blackmail would be on a par with some of his strongest works, confirming him as a director particularly advantaged by the advent of sound. This is because his strength lies in evoking a subsidiary uncanniness which can only achieve its full power after being diverted through the psychological realism that sound services - an uncanniness defined so much in terms of its repression, or suppression, that its import is lost in the overtly uncanny silent medium. More specifically, as Blackmail demonstrates, Hitchcock's twists are more psychological than narrative-based. Predicated upon the moment at which realism and uncanny subtext meet, they force us to identify with a character's realisation of the true state of things, rather than simply register a surprising event or act. In this way, Blackmail subjectivises the camera's gaze to an unprecedented extent, allowing spaces and objects to become projections of the character's inner lives - or, rather, providing the first systematic filmic exploration of what can only be described as psychological objects. This conflation of psychic and physical space also enables an incredibly sophisticated attention to mileu, from the opening sequence, which serves no other purpose than to establish atmosphere and location, to the concluding chase through the brooding British Museum, making it even more obvious than in The Lodger that Hitchcock was fascinated by London, and keen to elevate it to the status of a protagonist.