“Miss Up-to-Date”

It’s a long clip (c. 16 minutes), but it’s a doozy. And it starts with a swell vertical tracking shot.

Hitchcock’s Blackmail (1929) is widely regarded as the first British talkie, and this clip testifies to his genius and self-promotional acumen. Right off the bat, as film was still struggling to develop its own language, Hitchcock takes full advantage of his technologically-afforded options by letting a song do the narrational and affective work of the crucial early scene in his film.* As Alice changes into her costume to be “captured” by Crewe the creepy dilettante, he sings “Miss Up-to-Date” to her– a Billy Mayerl trifle about the changing social roles and public perceptions of the Twenties Woman. It’s telling, of course, that Hitchcock frames the song in a split-screen, undeniably (and creepily) revealing his own take on the topic: Crewe sings about a modern woman on one side, we watch one undress in front of us on the other side. “They praise the woman of the past age/ And loathe her daughter of this fast age/ They sing a hymn of hate for Miss Up-to-Date/ And spin their spite/ From morn ’til night.” Crewe ends the song by defending the woman-as-object-of-scorn (rhyming her name with “you’re absolutely great”), but then…yeeeeeeeee.

The entire scene’s worth watching, to marvel at the way Hitchcock–again, at a time when narrative film was far from a stable storytelling medium–was able to build suspense slowly and elegantly, without the worry of an intrustive score, (at least until the bad part is over) but simply through silence and shadows and strategic cutaways. The climactic moment is relayed only through the visual of flailing underneath the drapes, and the really climactic moment is totally silent.

* Hitchcock also learned of one of the many side-effects of sound during filming, as well. Anny Ondra, who played Alice (see previous post), came packaged with a wicked Czech accent, something that wasn’t an issue prior. Her voice is dubbed throughout the film.