Screening

About Blackmail

Year Released:

1929

Genres:

Thriller

Metadata:

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

Based on a Charles Bennett play of the same name, Alfred Hitchcock’s taut thriller focuses on Frank Webber, a Scotland Yard detective and his girlfriend Alice White. As their relationship becomes rocky, an incident with another man leaves Alice as the prime suspect in one of Frank’s investigations and the couple a target of blackmail from a mysterious third party. Originally made as a silent film, the studio had Hitchcock reshoot parts as a “talkie” and two versions of the film were released to British cinemas. Presented with live orchestral accompaniment and the U.S. premiere of a new musical score by Neil Brand. Composer Neil Brand is scheduled to be present. (2K DCP silent presentation with live orchestra.)

Advanced tickets are free to the first 100 IUB students with a student ID for each screening. All other tickets are $6.

This presentation of Blackmail with orchestral accompaniment marks another major collaboration with the Jacobs School of Music. Since opening, IU Cinema has collaborated with the Jacobs School of Music on multiple silent feature films with a student orchestra and maestro, as well as premieres of new scores for student films.

Neil Brand has been accompanying silent films for over 30 years, regularly in London at the Barbican, and at film festivals around the world, including the Bologna and Pordenone festivals where he inaugurated the School of Music and Image. He has made his name as a performer and composer, scoring British Film Institute video releases for dozens of silent films. Neil is considered one of the finest improvising piano accompanists in the world, but also a prolific radio playwright and actor who appears frequently on television, stage, and screen. Neil Brand’s fruitful relationship with the BBC Symphony Orchestra has resulted in London performances of his acclaimed orchestral score for Alfred Hitchcock’s Blackmail (commissioned by Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna), which will play five times in four different countries this year, including the U.S. premiere at IU Cinema.