Daily Viewing. Catherine Grant on Hitchcock's "Blackmail" (1929)

A real-time comparison of the silent and sound versions.
David Hudson
The Daily

From Catherine Grant:

One of the elements that Film Studies For Free appreciates most about online audiovisual film studies (film studies in digital video forms) are the phenomenological possibilities they offer viewers for the experiencing of moving image and sound juxtapositions in real time. We can synchronously feel, as well as know about, the comparisons they make. In other words, unlike written texts, they don't have to remove themselves from film-specific forms of meaning production to have their knowledge effects on us.

Embedded above is FSFF's homemade example of this kind of simple, more or less medium-specific, eloquence: a real-time video juxtaposition, made for the purposes of scholarly comparison, of corresponding sequences from the silent and sound versions of Alfred Hitchcock's Blackmail (1929). It is a work intended to supplement the contribution of an earlier blog entry here, entitled "Thrilling the Ears: Sound in Hitchcock's Cinema" in which the two sequences were separately embedded.

Carry on reading.

Related viewing. A mischievous sound test:

For news and tips throughout the day every day, follow @thedailyMUBI on Twitter and/or the RSS feed.

Don't miss our latest features and interviews.

Sign up for the Notebook Weekly Edit newsletter.

Tags

Alfred HitchcockDailyDaily Viewing
1
Please sign up to add a new comment.

PREVIOUS FEATURES

@mubinotebook
Notebook is a daily, international film publication. Our mission is to guide film lovers searching, lost or adrift in an overwhelming sea of content. We offer text, images, sounds and video as critical maps, passways and illuminations to the worlds of contemporary and classic film. Notebook is a MUBI publication.

Contact

If you're interested in contributing to Notebook, please see our pitching guidelines. For all other inquiries, contact the editorial team.