Blackmail Test Take (1929)

There is something enormously satisfying about the fact that this brief minute of film contains some of the first words spoken on film - and that they should be quite so saucy.

When Alfred Hitchcock decided to shoot his thriller 'Blackmail' in newfangled sound as well as a silent version, he was faced with a number of dilemmas. One of the biggest problems was with his leading lady, the Polish-Czech Anny Ondra, who had not been employed for the authenticity of her English accent.

This is the sound test that Hitchcock made. One of the results was that Ondra's lines in the sound version were dubbed live, off-screen, by the rather more English-sounding Joan Barry. (Robin Baker)

You can watch over 1200 other complete films and TV programmes from the BFI National Archive free of charge in the Mediatheque at BFI Southbank, London and at the new QUAD centre for art and film in Derby - http://www.bfi.org.uk/mediatheque http://www.derbyquad.co.uk/bfi-mediatheque

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• BFI
• Alfred
• Hitchcock
• Anny
• Ondra
• Blackmail
• Talkie
• Sound
• Film
• Polish
• Czech
• Accent
• Early
• Cinema

[80stimeagain]

Her voice is fine. She is really pretty too.

[JinSuka]

funny..and racey

[Saxifrage040210]

@Dkintaudi "Said the actress to the bishop" is older.

[Saxifrage040210]

She's adorable!

[Pie2]

Unintelligible my butt. I understood her perfectly. They should have just changed the characters background in the movie (which was great).

[bernlin2000]

@wabtanker He fucking invented "that's what she said"!

[geoffhutch]

OMG I want to fuck a girl who died before my mother!

[rabaukedavid]

she's so cute...for b/w^^

[mauijim662000]

KOOOOL!!

[belovedconsole]

This was so neat! Notice at the beginning, how she's mouthing his lines, particularly, "Your voice"... Some people memorize lines this way, by also memorizing the preceding character's, as a linear string. She's so cute, too; there's a spontaneity here that shows humans of such lost eras were still entirely human-- the stiff and stolid of posed photos now becoming animated and heard, less ghosts.

[jackkoffin1]

@sweiland75 Well... yes I am too young to recall first hand the days when a grown woman would blush and giggle at being asked if she has 'slept with men.' You'd have to try a lot harder than that to make most of the women I've known blush. ;)

[99hesoe]

@Dkintaudi I was thinking just that. The guy was a genius :D