Name: Byron Morales

Id: 00125730
The Films of Alfred Hitchcock
Date:21th September 2017

Reaction Paper No.2

1) A synthesis of the overall narrative of the film, including all of its plot elements

The story of Blackmail star with a police officers captured a man who lives in a poor

apartment. We can see how Scotland Yard works when they captured a criminal and the

people who involved with all the process. Frank is a police detective with a beautiful

girlfriend, Alice. They went to a tea house, we can see tension in both character, then they

had an argument and for this reason Frank leaves. While Frank thinks about his actions, he

realizes that he is acting wrong, but now he can only see Alice with another man.

Alice agreed to meet with the artist in the tea house. they go to the artists house and he

asked if she want to come in his house. The artist persuades a shy Alice into coming up to

see his studio. When they arrived at the studio, Alice admires all the painting, but she was

shocked by a laughing clown painting and she start to laugh. Alice using palette and

brushes to paint a cartoonish drawing of her face; the artist helps her and he adds a few

strokes of a feminine figure, and they both sign the painting. He gives her a dancer's outfit

and Crewe sings and plays Miss Up-to-Date on the piano.

All looks very funny and casual, but all changed when the artist kiss Alice. Alice was so

shocked and she decided to leave. The artist changed his attitude and looks very crazy and

tried to rape her. In desperation, Alice grabs a nearby bread knife and stab him. She angrily

punches a hole in the painting of the clown, then leaves after attempting to remove any
evidence of her presence in the flat like erase her sign of the painting she draws with the

artist, but accidentally leaves a glove. She walks the streets of London all night very

shocked, lost and confused.

The next day the polices came to crime scene and Frank founds Alices gloves and he hide

the evidence. He visits the house of Alice and he see that Alice was very disgust and lost.

Alices parents think that she fights again with Frank. As they hide from her father in a

telephone booth, Tracy arrives. He had seen Alice go up to the artist house, and he has one

of her gloves. When he sees Frank with the other one, he attempts to blackmail them. His

first demands are petty ones, and they accede. Frank learns by phone that Tracy is wanted

for questioning: he was seen near the scene and has a criminal record. Frank sends for

policemen and tells Tracy he will pay for the murder.

The reinforcement arrives and try to capture Tracy, but Tracy escapes through the city of

London, until it arrives at the museum of London and climbing until the glass of the dome

breaks and Tracy falls to the void. While this happen, Alice is already to confess his crime,

but in the office of chief police is Frank and he stopped her. At the end, we can see both

leaves and Frank start to talk with the guard and made jokes of woman will better detective

than man and they start to laugh very high while the painting of the clown pass in from of

Alice`s face.

3) Quotes

The film was excellent, the sound of the movie was unique. My favorite scene is when the

artist star playing Miss Up-to-Date on the piano while Alice change her clothes. The sounds

of birds, song and voices is incredible combination that makes this film amazing.
 The narrative was very good because we have an open final, we dont know if Alice

kill the artist or not. The develop of characters was excellent, especially Alice. We can see

in the start of the film Alice like a very funny and Independent woman and in the end we

can only see a very confused woman that she doesnt know what to do.

4) A discussion of the film

To Alfred Hitchcock the sound was opportunity because, it would seem to him little to

record his first sound film, that already had to experiment with it so that it did not leave a

vulgar film. And we can see this in a scene, where Alice is having breakfast with her family,

and besides there is a neighbor who does not stop talking, criticizing the weapon with

which the murder had been committed. As the director, in this sequence, distorted the sound

so that in the end only heard 'knife', again and again, repeating itself in the head of the

protagonist, until his father asks him to cut some bread, and Alice shocked loose the power

to control the knife and she drop it. Alfred found another uses of sound like when one

woman screams, he cuts the scene and sound and convert to another object like a car or

train.