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I have seen some strange movies recently. High Treason was one of them. It was made in 1929. Like Alfred Hitchcock's Blackmail, it started being shot as a silent movie and became a talkie. Much of the silent footage was recycled with dubbing. The acting was enthusiastic.
Gaumont-British made it in the UK, with a co-producer, the American company Tiffany.
High Treason was set in 1940, which the writers imagined as an advanced society with televisions and video phones, yet the hero commanded a squadron of biplane bombers. A cabal of arms manufacturers and other lowlifes stages a border incident threatening to start a war between the United States of Europe and the Empire of the Atlantic States. The Peace League tries to hold everyone back, but then the bad guys blow up a tunnel under the English Channel. The leader of the Pesce League solves the problem in an unexpected way.
There were many miniatures, especially showing the city and the channel tunnel. They were not as good as the miniatures in Hitchcock's later movies made in the UK.
Star Benita Hume later married Ronald Colman.
The movie was based on a play by Noel Pemberton Billing. I can't imagine how anyone staged it.
