Sound film "The Clue of the New Pin", a British Lion production using the sound-on-disc British Photophone system. In May, "Black Waters", a British and Dominions Film Corporation promoted as the first UK all-talker, received its initial trade screening; it had been shot completely in Hollywood with a Western Electric sound-on-film system. None of these pictures made much impact. The first successful European dramatic talkie was the all-British "Blackmail". Directed by twenty-nine-year-old Alfred Hitchcock, the movie had its London debut June 21, 1929. Originally shot as a silent, "Blackmail" was restaged to include dialogue sequences, along with a score and sound effects,
Alfred Hitchcock the light makes sure that the audience's attention is on the glass. Grant's character is a killer in the book on which the film was based, "Before the Fact" by Francis Iles, but the studio felt that Grant's image would be tarnished by that. Hitchcock therefore settled for an ambiguous finale, although, as he told François Truffaut, he would have preferred to end with the wife's murder. Fontaine won Best Actress for her performance. "Saboteur" (1942) is the first of two films that Hitchcock made for Universal during the decade. Hitchcock was forced by Universal Studios to use Universal contract