The 39 Steps

Movie Review: The 39 Steps

Year of Release: 1935
Country of Origin: UK
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: Robert Donat, Madeleine Carroll

Plot outline: A man tries to help a counterespionage agent. But when the agent is killed and he stands accused, he must go on the run to both save himself and also stop a spy ring trying to steal top secret information (IMDb).

Based on the adventure novel of the same title by John Buchan, this exciting and highly entertaining movie is the absolute best of Hitchcock’s British movies. It was the culmination of everything that he had achieved in his preceding twenty or so movies and a template for much of what was to follow - notably Saboteur and North by Northwest: a sympathetic Mr. Average is wrongly accused of a crime, finds the whole world turned against him and has to expose the real culprit to clear his name. It’s a familiar storyline, one that provides the bare bones for countless thriller novels and movies, but somehow no one tells it better than Hitchcock (!) Along with the subsequent The Lady Vanishes, this was the movie that earned Hitchcock his international reputation and his one-way ticket to Hollywood.

The 39 Steps is the movie that demonstrates how brilliantly Hitchcock exploits every aspect of filmmaking technique to craft a piece of cinema that scores highly on both the artistic and entertainment scales. The composition of shots, the choice of camera angles, the startling use of lighting, the precise editing - all work to build suspense, create atmosphere and tell the story as efficiently as possible. The result is a movie that rushes ahead like an express train, with plenty of humour but also a great deal of tension and darkness. Although the action slows down from time to time to allow the characters and the audience time to catch their breath, the pace is relentless, exhilarating and fun. In his most memorable role, Robert Donat makes a debonair and very likeable Richard Hannay, an obvious forerunner of the suave James Bond-style action heroes in cinema's later adventure thrillers. Donat has a natural sparkly rapport with his co-star Madeleine Carroll, which most manifests itself in the famous scene where they are handcuffed together in a hotel bedroom, one of funniest and most erotic scenes in any Hitchcock movies. Two other great actors, Peggy Ashcroft and John Laurie, bring a keen edge of realism to the movie’s most poignant scene, the one where Hannay unwittingly causes ructions in the farmer’s cottage. The 39 Steps has something of the feel of a silent movie, and not just because it employs some of the expressionistic touches of Hitchcock’s very early movies. It is a good example of pure cinema, telling the story using images rather than dialogue. Only a director who had mastered his art in the silent era – as Hitchcock had – could have such an innate appreciation of the potentialities of the moving image to tell a story and engage with an audience. Maybe this is the thing that most made Hitchcock a great filmmaker and why his movies have such an enduring, universal appeal. (JT)

My judgement: ***1/2 out of 4 stars