Blackmail (1929)

About Blackmail (1929)

Blackmail is a 1929 British crime thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Anny Ondra, John Longden, Donald Calthrop and Cyril Ritchard. Based on the 1928 play of the same name by Charles Bennett, the film is about a London woman who is blackmailed after killing a man who tries to rape her.

On 26 April 1929, Scotland Yard Detective Frank Webber escorts his girlfriend Alice White to a teahouse. They have an argument and Frank storms out. While reconsidering his action, he sees Alice leave with Mr. Crewe, an artist she had earlier agreed to meet. Crewe persuades a reluctant Alice into coming up to see his studio. She admires a painting of a laughing clown, and uses his palette and brushes to paint a cartoonish drawing of a face; guiding her hand, he adds a few strokes of a naked feminine figure, and she signs the picture with her name.

Summary adapted from the Wikipedia article Blackmail (1929 film) (text available under CC BY-SA 4.0).