Early Hitchcock
Introduction
Blackmail
Sabotage
The Aberrant Woman
Sex and Violence
Crime and Punishment
The Transfer of Guilt
Masculinity
Subjective Misinterpretation
A History of British Film
Early British Comedy
Early Hitchcock
Introduction to Humphrey Jennings
Humphrey Jennings and Third Cinema
The Stars Look Down / The Proud Valley – Conflict and Unity
The Renaissance of the 1980s
Film On Four
The Transfer of Guilt
Both Sylvia in Sabotage and Alice in Blackmail have, by the end of the film, effectively got away with murder. Rohmer-Chabrol, in Hitchcock: the first forty-four films, talk of the ‘explosion providentielle’, Sylvia’s guilt has been transferred to the bomb-maker.
Hitchcock treats guilt as highly contagious in his films. The previously honest detective Ted becomes a criminal by his involvement with the guilty woman. The same is true of Frank in Blackmail. Also in Blackmail, both the bomb-maker and the blackmailer die for someone else’s crimes. Parallel editing shows the blackmailer’s flight from police intercut with close-ups of the true murderess in remorse. The crimes are punished but it’s not necessarily the correct person who receives the punishment.