The 39 Steps

The 39 Steps (1935) 

Notable cast/crew: Robert Donat as Hannay.  Madeleine Carroll as Pamela.  Lucie Mannheim as Miss Smith.  Godfrey Tearle as Professor Jordan.  Wylie Watson as Mister Memory.

Running time: 86 minutes

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Plot: Mister Memory is a performer whose show consists of his ability to memorize trivia and then answer questions asked by the audience.  Hannay shows up and joins in the questioning.  Some drunks in the back cause a disturbance, and, in the scuffle, shots are fired.  Panic ensues, and one poor farmer never does find out what causes pip in poultry.  Miss Smith is pushed into Hannay's arms, and as they exit the theatre, she asks to come home with him.

How many fingers am I holding up?

At his apartment, she tells him she is a spy.  She fired the shots to create a diversion from two assassins are on her trail.  There is a plot to steal plans from the British air defence, and she is on her way to Scotland to stop it.

In the night, she wakes up Hannay, holding out a map of Scotland with a town circled, exclaiming, "They will get you next!"  She falls over, dead, a knife sticking out of her back.  Hannay looks at the map and remembers what she told him.  Fearing for his own life, he steals a milkman's uniform and sneaks out of his apartment.  When the maid comes, she finds Miss Smith's body, and the whole country begins a manhunt for Hannay thinking he is the killer.

Hannay makes his way to Scotland thinking he'll find the man Miss Smith was hoping would help her.  He encounters a Professor who knows her, and he asks for his help.  Hannay was mistaken.  The man Smith was going to see, Professor Jordan, was the ringleader of the spies.  She was going to stop him, not ask for his help.  Jordan shoots Hannay and thinks he's killed him.

Hannay escapes and goes to the police, but they don't believe him.  On the run again, now being pursued by the police and Jordan's men, he is turned in by Pamela who had already turned him in once on the train to Scotland.  Jordan's men, posing as police, "arrest" Hannay and take Pamela with them.  Hannay and Pamela are handcuffed together, but they are able to make their escape onto the moors.  After she finds out the truth, she aids Hannay in foiling the plot.  She goes to Scotland Yard, but they also don't believe her even though she knows details of the air defence.  They've found no papers missing, so they think nothing is wrong.

Hannay has gone to the London Palladium to stop Jordan where who is performing but Mister Memory.  Hannay pieces together that Memory is working with Jordan.  The papers aren't missing because Memory has memorized them.  He's leaving the country with Jordan after the show.  As the police arrest Hannay, he yells out, "What are the 39 Steps?"  Memory, in a panic to maintain his reputation, reveals it to be a spy organization, but he is shot before he can reveal for which country.  Jordan is the shooter and is quickly captured.  Before expiring, Memory reveals the plans he has memorized confirming Hannay's claim of innocence.

MacGuffin: The plans for the airplane engine, although arguably the 39 Steps itself is a MacGuffin

Hitchcock cameo: He tosses a cigarette box as the bus pulls up when Hannay and Smith leave the theatre

Hitchcock themes: 

• Blondes
• Likable criminal
• Hero falsely accused
• Murder

Verdict: This is one of Hitchcock's best British films.  For me, it's between this and The Lady Vanishes.  It's a chase film, and it shares a lot of ideas with North By Northwest.  The movie is well cast, and it moves along briskly as Hannay escapes one fix after another.  Godfrey Tearle is a dead ringer for FDR and would actually play FDR in an MGM film about the Manhattan Project.  If you can, watch the Criterion Collection version of this as it has been restored to excellent condition.

The bridge on which the train stops to search for Hannay is the famous railway bridge over the Firth of Forth, built from 1884 till 1889. It was then one of the most complicated works of engineering craftsmanship. It spans 2.5 km.

Before filming the scene where Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll run through the countryside, Alfred Hitchcock handcuffed them together and pretended for several hours to have lost the key in order to put them in the right frame of mind for such a situation.  Carroll suffered at the hands of Hitchcock's quest for realism, right down to the real welts on her wrists from the long days of being handcuffed to Donat.

Hitchcock does a nice trick with the maid finding Miss Smith's body.  As she turns to the camera and is about to scream, he cuts to a shot of the train with the whistle blast replacing her scream.

Out of five bananas, I give it:

Next review: Secret Agent