The 39 Steps

The 39 Steps; thriller, UK, 1935; D: Alfred Hitchcock, S: Robert Donat, Madeleine Carroll, Godfrey Tearle, Lucie Mannheim, John Laurie, Peggy Ashcroft

London. Canadian citizen Richard Hannay attends an amusing show in which entertainer "Mr. Memory" displays his encyclopedic knowledge by answering questions from the audience, when suddenly a shot from a gun is heard and the audience runs away in panic. Richard meets Annabelle and gives her shelter in his apartment, where she admits that she is a spy and that she discovered the secret called "The 39 Steps". The next morning, Richard finds her killed, stabbed by a knife, and in his getaway from the police he goes to Scotland. There he discovers that the secret of "39 Steps" are kept by the evil spy Jordan who wants to eliminate him. Still, with the help of attractive Pamela, with whom he was handcuffed, he finds out that Mr. Memory knows the secret of "39 Steps": a design for a soundless aircraft. Mr. Memory gets shot but still tells them the information.

The breakthrough film in Alfred Hitchcock's career, after he already made 19 films, "The 39 Steps" are not one of his best or most virtuoso made achievements, but are still arguably the best British film he made before his departure to the US, an elegant, amusing and intriguing thriller without too much suspense—actually, by today's standards, the movie is almost suitable even for little kids. Although the chopped-up story doesn't have too much sense or logic (for instance, if the spies killed Annabelle in Hannay's apartment, why didn't they also kill him? Why would they stop and wait for him to come out of the apartment on the street?), and has too many loose elements that don't come together, the film as a whole still works surprisingly well thanks to humorous situations—for instance, the opening dialogue between protagonist Hannay and Annabelle where she reveals she is a spy ("Agent? For what country?" - "Any country that pays me". - "And what is your country?" - "I have no country". - "Born in a balloon, eh?").

The concept of Mr. Memory, a sort of pre-Internet human Wikipedia, a man who constantly reads encyclopedias and then can answer any question in front of the audience, is clever and stimulating. The way Hannay manages to escape from his apartment after the murder, knowing that evil agents are waiting for him outside, thanks to the fact that he dresses up into the uniform of a milkman whom he told he is "hiding from a jealous husband" with whose wife he just had an affair with, is delicious, whereas there is one iconic scene transition that has been copied in a hundred films after this one: a lady landlord opens the door, sees the scene of murder, turns around to open her mouth, but instead of a scream, we hear the high-pitch sound of the chimney steam locomotive, as there is a cut to the train with the hero inside. Likewise, when Hannay is forced to run and hide in a hotel together with the arrogant Pamela who was handcuffed to him by false police officers, is funny: the intriguing concept of two different protagonists bound together was later copied in a lot of films, like in "The Defiant One". Fast, dynamic, using suspense to intensify drama and character relationships, equipped with Hitchcock's exciting and classic concept of an innocent man accused of a crime he didn't commit, "39 Steps" are a flawed, simplistic, yet overall still a very good film.

Grade:+++