Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Laurent Bouzereau
Narrated by: Elvis Mitchell
Hitchcock: The Beginning is a new
11-disc bluray boxset from Studiocanal featuring 10 of
Alfred Hitchcock's early films and a new documentary,
Becoming Hitchcock, which explores the legacy of Hitchcock's first sound film, 1929's
Blackmail.
In the first part of our 11-part review of the boxset, we look at
Becoming Hitchcock.
Alfred Hitchcock's golden age is generally considered as the
1951-'63 run that began with Strangers on a Train and climaxed
with
The Birds. Some would argue this period is rivalled by "the early British ones." The
latter designation usually refers to the 1934-'38 run from the first version
of The Man Who Knew Too Much to The Lady Vanishes. But prior to The Man Who Knew Too Much, Hitchcock had already directed over a dozen features in England, 10 of
which are collected in Studiocanal's bluray boxset 'Hitchcock: The
Beginning'.
Also included in the set is the feature length documentary
Becoming Hitchcock, written and directed by the king of DVD/bluray extras,
Laurent Bouzereau, and narrated by film critic
Elvis Mitchell.
Subtitled 'The Legacy of Blackmail', the doc focusses on that 1929 thriller, rightly positing the film as a
hugely important and pivotal point in Hitchcock's career. It was the
director's first time working with sound, though a silent version of the
movie was also produced. Much has been written and spoken about
Hitchcock's visual storytelling over the decades, less so about his use of
sound. Bouzereau takes the opportunity of interrogating the director's
first sound film to highlight the innovative ways Hitchcock employed sound
to complement his visuals, from the famous isolation of the word "knife"
in a fraught Blackmail breakfast scene to the unseen
footsteps of a pursuit sequence in
Torn Curtain. We're also provided an insight into the challenges of recording sound
in 1929, with the crude microphone setups meaning actors would often have
to pause mid-sentence and move within range of another mic before
continuing a line. And of course, Blackmail's leading lady, German-Czech actress Anny Ondra, was incapable of
delivering the required cockney accent and so simply mouthed her lines
while an English actress spoke them offscreen.
Blackmail is posited here as not just the first Hitchcock
sound film, but as the first truly recognisable Hitchcock movie, the
spindle from which was spun the rest of his career. Bouzereau notes how many of the tropes we would come to associate with
the Master of Suspense are present in nascent form in the 1929 thriller.
It has an "innocent" party evading the authorities. Ondra is the first of
Hitch's classic blondes. It features the recurring double act of a suave
villain and a more brutish secondary antagonist. And of course it has
Hitch's favourite method of murder, stabbing.
At 72 minutes, Becoming Hitchcock is almost the same length
as the film it's centred on, and almost every scene of
Blackmail is discussed in some form. You might then ask if
it's really any different than a feature commentary track. Well, yes it
is, as the documentary format allows Bouzereau to inject scenes from later
Hitchcock films to emphasise the points he's making about
Blackmail's place in the director's filmography. You might also wonder why the
film is narrated by a film critic reading another writer's words. The
answer is in Mitchell's infectious enthusiasm. There's an exuberant
delight in Mitchell's narration, as though he's rediscovering the film
through Bouzereau's insights, and you can picture him smiling as he narrates some
of the more perceptive passages. Between Bouzerau's penetrative analysis
and Mitchell's vocal cheerleading, Becoming Hitchcock may
well have you programming your own Hitchcock season when the credits roll.
If so, Studiocanal's boxset is a perfect place to start.
Becoming Hitchcock is included
in Studiocanal's 'Hitchcock: The Beginning' bluray boxset, available
from December 16th.