Could you repeat that? Hitchcock’s use of sound in Blackmail

The year was 1929, and British International Pictures (BIP) wanted Alfred Hitchcock to shoot his film, Blackmail, as a silent picture—one that would conclude with a short bang of unexpected synchronized dialogue; however, Hitchcock played by his own rules—as he was well-known for doing—shooting segments of the picture using the sound-on-film technology. Amidst the tension and, as John Belton notes in his essay, "Awkward Transitions: Hithcock's Blackmail and the Dynamics of Early Film Sound," awkwardness between silent and audible cinema, Hitchcock made an effort to enlighten studio executives and critics who claimed “pure cinema” was being tainted by the arrival of synchronized sound—notably Rudolf Arnheim. In his first “talkie,” Hitchcock forms a modernist strategy to show that sound can and should be used as an artistic channel to further explore certain forms of silent, or “pure,” cinema, such as expressionism and Soviet Montage. He does this by using sound in a de-familiarizing way—unlike conservative filmmakers at the time, who were disregarding cinematic standards and advertising synchronized sound as the selling point of their films.

Some silent-film theorists believed cinema was peaking around the late 1920’s, to a point where the art form could be expressed entirely in the visual image. With the arrival of sound, Arnheim and others believed the entrance of sound into cinema would taint and de-purify the aesthetic (Belton 236). In “Film As Art,” Arnheim writes about the threat sound technology poses to silent film, saying that the wholesomeness of silent cinema is forever lessened because of it: “Only after one has known talkies is the lack of sound conspicuous in a silent film” (Arnheim 33). He elaborates, “No one missed the sound of walking feet, nor the rustling of leaves, nor the ticking of a clock. The lack of such sounds (speech of course, is also one of them) was hardly ever apparent…” (Arnheim 33).

Films like The Jazz Singer (1927) supported Arnheim’s observations, using Al Jolson’s musical numbers and other sound segments in ways that crushed the power of the image—these scenes would be nothing without sound, and if reverted back to the silent format, the presence of sound would sorely be missed. In Blackmail, Hitchcock sees this flaw and embraces the transitional modernity of nascent sound technologies by using sound in ways that are almost anti-spectacular and de-realizing: jokes are inaudible, certain sounds—a bird chirping—are headache inducing, and a phone call to the police is repeatedly misunderstood. Even in the most climactic moment, when Alice is about to confess to the police, sound blocks the truth—or the “purity of goodness,” which Arnheim links to the silent film—by way of a telephone call the policemen feels the need to answer (Arnheim, 230).

Belton points out that Hitchcock is an auteur with a mission to somehow maintain a place for Soviet Montage and expressionism whilst using synchronized sound: “Hitchcock's work is, in many ways, the epitome of pure cinema, synthesizing the two major silent film traditions of purely visual expression: Soviet montage and German expressionism” (Belton 236-237). Here, Belton argues, to some extent, that Hitchcock agrees with Arnheim in that simply slapping a musical number in to exhibitionalize the coming of sound wasn’t in a sense “pure”; however, as a closer analysis of Blackmail will reveal, Hitchcock was quite more optimistic about the capabilities of the technology, which is why he uses it in a way to compliment the “pure” forms of silent cinema Arnheim speaks of.

Hitchcock’s dedication to retaining silent film strategies developed in Soviet Montage and expressionism as cinema entered a new world can be seen throughout Blackmail, starting immediately. About five minutes in, we see a montage of pictures of an ashtray and a revolving cigarette, clearly referring to the passing of time. About an hour in, we get a series of quick cuts and items, including a telephone, the flipping-through of police reports, a “wanted” sign, and a mug shot of Tracy. This scene, an example of Montage in Sergei Eisenstein’s terms—he writes in his essay “A Dialectic Approach To Film Form” that Montage is “an idea that arises from the collision of independent shot[s]”—does not rely on sound at all. It conveys the research, discovery, and conclusion of the police department’s search of Tracy’s run-ins with the law in a quick, sensory-pleasing manner—a feat that could not be achieved verbally. Immediately following this montage, Hitchcock literally runs the law into Tracy when he shows the police chief, who seems determined to bring Tracy to justice, rubbing his hands together and fades it into a shot of Tracy, who is out to manipulate justice, doing the exact same thing.

In addition to Montage, there are many examples of expressionism, which David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson define in “Film History” as an “extreme distortion to express an inner emotional reality,” throughout Blackmail—some of which will be covered later (Bordwell and Thompson 91). Belton points out Hitchcock’s use of shadows—Mr. Crewe’s villain-like mustache for instance—as a form of expressionism (Belton 240). Also of note is Crewe’s apartment, which, with its sharp, teeth-like fireplace awning, could have been decorated in hell. Crewe’s room serves as an ironic locale, because in this world, hell is upstairs—up many flights of stairs, in fact—along with lofty ideals of the bourgeoisie, including art, which is Crewe’s profession. Its minimal, de-realized décor leaves an unsettling, nonhuman feeling—a feeling that is proven true after Alice refuses to submit to Crewe.

Toward the end of the film, when Tracy is on the run, Hitchcock uses the British Museum as an outlet for expressionism. As Tracy first surveys the deep halls of the museum, Hitchcock uses parallel lines and minimal mise-en-scene—the nearly-identical sculptures and bookshelves and the vacant hallways—to paint deep, symmetrical paths for our eyes, as well as Tracy’s, to follow. It’s as if Tracy still feels he has control, knows where he needs to go, and can maintain some order in the world around him. As he’s identified and chased, we see that order quickly deteriorate, as he swings like a primitive caveman from a rope in front of an Egyptian sculpture that is staring directly at him. He then enters a circular conference room that is packed to the brim with chairs and tables, and it’s here he realizes that he’s running in circles, and claustrophobia and confusion sink in. In his final scene inside the museum, Tracy is shown frantically running through an angular library area—a place far more disorientating than the deep, easy-to-follow hallways of the museum floor. The books in this area are arranged like patchwork, and Tracy’s hope has diminished to out-running the policemen through an academic corn maze. Through this expressionistic decor, Hitchcock shows Tracy’s psyche visually, shifting from control to chaos as he panics every-which-way before his death.

Now that Hitchcock’s use of silent film techniques through the image has been established, an analysis of the use of sound throughout Blackmail further illuminates his mission—taking sound and using it in de-realizing ways in an attempt to redefine the standards and capabilities of motion picture sound.  The film opens with a chase scene, where police are shown riding in a police car. The inside of the car is cramped and closely resembles a sound booth, and we see a man with headphones—paralleling a sound engineer—interpret a message. Instead of verbally relaying the communication to the other policemen inside the vehicle, he copies it to a note, which Hitchcock frames like an intertitle. Mouths move from time to time throughout the first eight minutes, but no dialogue is heard; Hitchcock forces the audience to pay attention to a voiceless story. He knows the audience wants to hear a crisp line of dialogue, but is content on teasing them throughout this opening scene. Finally, diegetic sound arrives, and it comes in the form of a nearly inaudible conversation between Frank and another policeman. It is not a plot-revealing moment; rather, the two policemen talk about fashion and the fine-tailoring of their suits. By opening the film this way, Hitchcock gives his audience a memorandum, which says something along the lines of, “Sound exists, hurray. Now let’s use it progressively.”

In the scene following Crewe’s murder, Alice, who has just stabbed Crewe, wanders around the city for what seems to be an eternity. Hitchcock paints her psychological picture using expressionism both visually and aurally. Aside from the obvious references to Crewe’s lifeless arm laying just outside of the curtain and the neon sign that morphs into a stabbing knife, Hitchcock uses other shots to release Alice’s emotions into the world around her. In a tracking shot, we see Alice walking left to right, and, in the opposite direction, people pass her by rather nonchalantly. A closer viewing of this moment reveals that Hitchcock superimposes ghost-like figures on top of the actual people who pass Alice by. It is as if Alice’s mind is racing, unable to distinguish her haunting thoughts from reality.

Another shot reveals Alice walking by a theatre that reads “A New Comedy.” Flocks of people are heading towards the theater—in the opposite direction of Alice—while some remain stationary underneath the theatre lights. We see them laughing, free of all responsibility, either excited to see the show or amused by its contents. Alice struggles to make her away through the crowd. She walks down the sidewalk into the darkness at the bottom of the composition, suggesting that her happy-go-lucky days are over, and that an uncertain gloom awaits her.

During this city-walk montage, “Miss of Today” is used as the film’s soundtrack. The once-cheery tune—as heard earlier when Crewe belts it out on the piano—is now not so lighthearted; rather, the arrangement is foreboding and heavy, taking Alice’s inner-self, which is unnerved by the thought of Crewe’s swan song, and conveying it through the soundtrack. Here, Hitchcock produces what can be called aural expressionism, a technique that combines audio with one of pure cinema’s methods. Hitchcock’s use of aural expressionism shows sound as means to de-realize and distort, much like the other silent film methods he uses.

Other instances of aural expressionism occur the morning after the murder. As Alice wakes up and gets dressed for the day, a bird, off-screen, can be heard chirping at an ear-piercing level. The chirping goes on for two minutes and serves two purposes. First, it is a perfect example of sound overpowering the image, and Hitchcock uses it to illustrate the fact that sound technology without a relevant image is not where the entertainment of cinema lies—in fact, it is a rather irritating moment in the film. Second, in relevance to expressionism, the chirping depicts the paralleled paranoia and uneasiness Alice is feeling about the murder by seeming larger than life, something she can try to ignore but those around her—in this case the audience—cannot. Later, over breakfast, Alice is in conversation with a woman at her father’s store. The woman is discussing the murder, and Hitchcock slowly blurs her dialogue, save the word “knife,” which cuts through the soundtrack and eventually crescendos until it shreds the audience’s ears. “Knife” is all Alice can seem to think about, and by using sound as a portal, Hitchcock allows us to delve into her emotions while at the same time de-realizing the delivery of a character’s dialogue.

Borrowing, as we have seen, from Montage and expressionism, Hitchcock’s display of synchronized sound methods reflects a magnitude of modernity (the coming of a new sensory technology to cinema) we will unlikely see again—unless smell-o-vision makes a triumphant return. Hitchcock went on to push the limits of storytelling in cinema with wild twists in Vertigo, Rear Window, and Psycho, among others, but with Blackmail he makes perhaps his most impressive cinematic statement—one that offers a personal view on a new cinematic technology. By making Blackmail, Hitchcock essentially slaps films like The Jazz Singer and On With The Show in the face and points to these intricate applications of sound—not the noise itself—as the nucleus of the technology’s capability. In doing so, he refutes Arnheim’s claim that the arrival of sound marks the death of cinema as art and shows that sound may indeed serve a purpose similar to silent film forms. It seems rather fitting that Hitchcock teased audience’s craving for sound in 1929, as he would tease audiences throughout the rest of his career throughout his career—he was, after all, “The Master of Suspense.”