| 39 Steps, The (1935) |
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  (8/10)
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Runtime: 87 |
| Public Rating: 8.67 (9 votes) |
Director: Alfred Hitchcock |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: Mystery/Thriller/Adventure |
Year: 1935 |
| Writer(s): Charles Bennett (adaptation), Ian Hay (dialogue), John Buchan (novel) |
| Distributor: Criterion Collection |
| Reviewed by: Mel Valentin |
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Alfred Hitchcock's eighteenth film, The 39 Steps, spy-chase suspense-thriller released in 1935, is considered one of the "masterpieces" from his British period (e.g., The Lady Vanishes, The Lodger). A more accurate description of The 39 Steps would use the words proficient, lightweight, and highly entertaining. The camerawork, the mise-en-scene, and the staging suggests a technically competent director, but little else. The plotting, characters, pacing, and, most of all, the humor (some of it black), however, make The 39 Steps well worth repeat viewings. In addition, contemporary audiences may find it difficult to look beyond the film's dated special effects. To be fair, with the British film industry in an almost-constant state of financial crisis, Hitchcock was often compelled to work with limited budgets (Hitchcock's subsequent move to the United States four years later was, at least in part, motivated by the prospect of working on better financed projects).
Based on a then-popular novel by John Buchan, The 39 Steps utilizes the double-chase/"wrong man" scenario, a wrongly accused protagonist escaping a murder charge while pursuing villainous spies, a duplicitous, untrustworthy female lead, and, of course, a MacGuffin (i.e., the object of desire that sets the plot in motion, but is otherwise superfluous, an object important to the characters, but not the audience), that pales in comparison to the director's later, more tightly controlled, more polished efforts, specifically North by Northwest, made more than twenty years later with Cary Grant in the lead role, an advertising executive thrust into the Cold War world of spies and shifting identities and James Mason as his deadly, British-accented antagonist. If anything, The 39 Steps should be considered the prototype for ideas and characters Hitchcock would later hone to perfection (Hitchcock would borrow the scenario in The 39 Steps only seven years later, with Saboteur).
As The 39 Steps opens, Richard Hannay (Robert Donat), a Canadian ex-pat living in London, meets a mysterious woman, Annabella Smith (Lucie Mannheim) at a working-class, smoke-filled, raucous music hall, the London Palladium. At the music hall, a stage act, Mr. Memory, fields and accurately answers questions from the audience. In the first bit of humor, the stage manager asks the audience to settle down, "Gentlemen, gentlemen, please, you're not at home!" Apparently desperate for protection, the woman invites herself to Hannay's apartment (he agrees, without hesitation). He responds with the blackest of humor (that also foreshadows her fate), "It's your funeral." After a brief conversation where she reveals her "true" identity (at first, Hannay refuses to believe her, ascribing her story to an overactive imagination) and her mission, Hannay follows her suggestion to look outside a window, where two, thuggish men are, of course, waiting under a streetlamp. Convinced, Hannay listens raptly as Annabella shares what she knows about the spies and their plans. Playing the chivalrous gentleman, Hannay offers his bedroom to his new guest (he takes the couch in the living room).
Only a few hours later (it's still night time), she staggers into his living room, with a fatal knife wound in her back, clutching a map of Scotland. Luckily, before she died, Annabella circled a small town, Alt-Na-Shellach, on the map. With a dead body in his apartment and several vague clues in hand, Hannay flees. Hannay must escape the police, locate Annabella's killers, and stop a spy plot that could irreparably damage the British armed forces. Often accused of paying little notice to "logic" in plot construction, Hitchcock does allow a glaring plothole in the first act: the protagonist escapes unscathed while his guest is murdered in the next, unlocked room, if for no other purpose other than that he's the protagonist and must survive for the plot to move forward. Complications, dilemmas, and reversals follow.
Hannay's frantic search takes him from London to the Scottish Highlands (Hitchcock mixes studio sets and location photography), a brief flirtation with a young married woman (her significantly older, possessive husband immediately perceives the younger man as a sexual threat), the head of the spy ring, known as the "Professor" (a wealthy, urbane, pro-fascist aristocrat), and the young woman who becomes his primary romantic interest, Pamela (Madeline Carroll, the type of cool, detached blonde that would later become a Hitchcock trademark). Their first encounter on a moving train goes from bad to worse, with Pamela immune to Hannay's charms or his declarations of innocence (she immediately turns him in to the police).
Uncharacteristically, Hitchcock has Hannay escape a life-threatening situation off screen, and later describe near miraculous escape to a secondary character, a local constable. Rather than believe or even investigate Hannay's claims, the constable defers to authority. Hannay again finds himself on the run, forced to improvise, ultimately entering public meeting hall, where a political rally is being held. He's casually mistaken for the speaker, forcing him to give an extemporaneous speech that has the crowd cheering (a pointed barb at politicians, who'll say anything to acquire votes, as well as against easily led mobs).
Handcuffed together by another implausible plot turn, the pair argues, fight, and eventually begin to fall for each other. Film critics and academics have read a great deal this plot device, most of it obvious, about the pair falling in love while handcuffed together (i.e., signifying the literal bonds of wedded domesticity), especially in comparison to the other references or situations that touch on marriage. Besides the old farmer and his young, repressed wife, The 39 Stepsfeatures several other couples, including the "Professor" and his wife, and an older couple, innkeepers, who dote on Richard and Pamela in their masquerade as a married couple. It's worth noting, however, that the humorous dialogue and chemistry between Richard and Pamela provides the audience with one of The 39 Steps'central pleasures.
The plot eventually comes full circle, returning Richard to London and the music hall, where Mr. Memory is scheduled to give a repeat performance. The 39 Steps, of course, gets resolved to both the audience's and the protagonist's satisfaction. Since this is, after all, a Hitchcock film, the meaning behind the film's title, The 39 Steps, is revealed at the climax, but practically as an afterthought. The 39 Steps provides multiple pleasures, but viewers new to Hitchcock's work will do better to explore the films he directed in the 1950s first, and work their way backwards (with one notable, post-1950s exception, The Birds).
© Mel Valentin, 2nd May, 2004
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 Printable Version
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* Available subtitles: English
* Available Audio Tracks: English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono)
* Commentary by Hitchcock scholar Marian Keane
* New digital transfer, with restored picture and sound
* The complete 1937 broadcast of the Lux Radio Theatre adaptation performed by Robert Montgomery and Ida Lupino
* The Art of Film: Vintage Hitchcock, the complete Janus Films documentary detailing the director's British period
* Excerpts from the original 1935 press book
* Original production design drawings
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