Week 6: The 39 Steps (1935)

Good evening,

In The 39 Steps, a man named Richard Hannay (Robert Donat) meets a mysterious woman at a show in London. She convinces him to take her to his house, where she reveals to him that she is a secret agent and that some British military secrets are in the process of being stolen. She soon realizes that she has been followed to his house and reveals to him that he is now in danger as well. He offers her a place to stay for the night before she continues on her quest to stop the secrets from leaving the country. However, she is killed in the middle of the night. Not knowing what to do, he follows what clues she left behind to try to stop the thief, only to discover that the police believe he killed her. He has to race to stop the secrets from being stolen, hide from the police and the foreign agents, and prove his innocence.

I had never seen this film all the way through before, though I had caught bits and pieces on television. I was very impressed. The movie, though short, is very fast-paced from the outset.Unfortunately that can lead to some confusion towards the very beginning. The shots change quickly between people talking and at first, the viewer is unsure exactly what is happening or who to be watching. But it hits its stride quickly and more than makes up for any temporary confusion.

The audience is never bored for a moment, and the characters never seem safe for even an entire scene. Hitchcock creates several moments where the audience might believe Hannay has eluded danger for a moment, only to quickly realize how wrong they are.

This is the type of film where you have to be sharp and paying attention at all times, because most of what you see, no matter how insignificant it may seem at first, will be revisited later in the film and pay into the plot twists. 

Something that I really enjoyed as a Hitchcock fan was watching his masterful suspense so relatively early in his career. At this time he had not made the majority of the films we now remember him for, but I cannot say that he had not hit his stride. The way he manipulated little plot points that come together later in the film, the way he sets up the film work to show the audience what the characters need to be afraid of, the way he never lets you rest for a moment...all of those very Hitchcock elements were ever present in this film.

The acting is stunning. In particular, the interactions between Donat and a woman who turns him into the police during the film, Pamela (Madeleine Carroll) are pleasant, amusing, and very believable. They end up handcuffed to each other at one point in the film and spend several scenes on the run, literally stuck together. The frustration between the two of them is very entertaining to watch.

Of course, Hitchcock had a hand in that as well. While filming this movie, he had them handcuffed before filming the scene and pretended to have lost the key so that they had to spend several hours handcuffed to one another. His unorthodox methods to achieve realism definitely paid off. To which I would say, who needs method acting when you have a director like Hitchcock?

This film is a beloved one to many fans, and I am glad that I finally found the time to watch it. I give it an A, and I think everyone should give it a watch.