The 39 Steps

Watching The 39 Steps seventy plus years later Alfred Hitchcock’s mastery of cinema reveals itself all over again.

Still funny, still exciting, still surprising, the film sells you the entire cinema seat and you still only use the edge of it.

Well aware of what made moviegoers tick, the director and long time screenwriting associate Charles Bennett retained only the barebones of John Buchan’s novel, and added the handcuffed love/hate/love relationship between Donat’s Hannay and Carroll’s Pamela that the film is best remembered for, but which actually takes up little screen time.

Expat Canadian Richard Hannay finds himself on the run after a glamorous Eastern European spy is murdered in his apartment and he is fingered as the hand on the knife.

Claiming she was hunting a criminal mastermind selling valuable national security secrets, Hannay takes the spy’s only clue, a map, to Scotland to expose the baddie and discover what the “39 steps” are.

With the police dogging his footsteps, the Scottish locals less than friendly, and hitmen everywhere Hannay is always a breath away from death, never more so than when he finds himself cuffed to Pamela, a woman desperate to get him behind bars.

Hitchcock reworked The 39 Steps repeatedly while in Hollywood, most famously in North by Northwest (Buchan’s novel features a sequence where Hannay is chased by an aeroplane), while Carroll is an early example of the Hitchcock blonde who would evolve most memorably into Psycho’s Janet Leigh and Vertigo’s Kim Novak.

But, what Hitchcock did here can be seen in films such as Raiders of the Lost Ark, Midnight Run, and the Bourne series.

The dynamic camerawork remains a treat to watch (and only seven years after synch-sound arrived), the use of special effects is breathtakingly confident (watch the great use of back projection when Hannay jumps from one train carriage to another) and the darkly comic sound effects remain a treat (a shrill whistle when a cleaner discovers the dead female spy is a stunning moment).

Donat plays the whole shenanigans straight-faced, and a fantastic gallery of characters (including a young Peggy Ashcroft) add background colour, particularly Carroll, whose scenes with Donat have barely aged a day.

Sure there are plot holes, sure some of the dialogue creaks, but will we be watching summer blockbusters seventy years from now with as much enjoyment?

Rob Daniel