30s Hitch: MURDER! (That doesn’t need to be spelled out, does it?)
The first movie to feature voiceover narration is full of fun stuff; it is a perky, fast-paced blast. Hitchcock had proved what he could do with this type of material in 1927’s “The Lodger – a Tale of the London Fog” and here, he ups the ante; this time, instead of a male protagonist who’s falsely accused, it’s a woman. It’s also a blonde woman who is offered up as the sacrificial lamb, setting up Hitch’s blonde fetish for the next forty-plus years. We have cross-dressing and gender-bending, altogether-too-close-up shots of feet, the desperate acts that a racist society can drive someone to, the brutal irony of that act, discussions of the barbarity of capital punishment, and a metatextual finale that calls into question the nature of the narrative just watched. In other words, Hitchcock is becoming HITCHCOCK. While it’s true that “The Lodger” is truly the first “Hitchcock film” after years of working on pretty middle of the road fare, and “Blackmail” is certainly a treat in...