Alfred Hitchcock -- Anny Ondra And Others

I've been watching something from my Alfred Hitchcock collection everyday recently while I do my morning and evening exercises. That really stretches out a movie, but I stay interested.

I can't even remember all I've seen. I got this $5 set at Walmart that has 20 movies on it, all directed by Hitchcock. Some of the film quality is less than optimum but it's not terrible. I keep thinking that if I had all these movies on actual 16mm film reels how much room it'd take to store them. And how much effort it'd be to thread them and watch them, although it'd be fun.

I'm watching the other movie by Hitch that stars Anny Ondra, "Blackmail." The first one was "The Manxman." I could be in love with Anny if she wasn't dead. If it could be 1929 again, I'd look her up. Probably not really, since I don't actually contact movie stars. I understand they don't appreciate that. There's a good Wikipedia article on her. She married the famous boxer Max Schmeling and they were married for a long time, until she died. And I wouldn't want to tangle with a boxer!

Anyway, "Manxman" was totally silent. "Blackmail" was filmed as both a silent movie and a talkie. The version I have is the latter, but it starts off silent and is silent for quite a while. Then the voices start in. I read, also at Wiki, that Anny's voice in this was provided by another person just off camera, speaking while Anny's mouth moved. Because Anny had a Czech sounding voice and that's not what Hitch wanted.

Another one I watched just recently was "Champagne," a silent movie about a young heiress. She's quite a handful, but her father teaches her a lesson of sorts about money by faking that he's lost all his money. I don't know that she actually learns the lesson but it has a happy ending. It has lots of funny bits. The leading man, Betty's love interest, isn't at all desirable so it's hard to root for him. But maybe they had different standards back in the '20s.