The 39 Steps (1935)

Don't walk away from this early Alfred Hitchcock thriller.

The 39 Steps: The Criterion Collection, one of the last films the master director made in his native England before leaving for the United States, is a must-see gem.

PLENTY OF HUMOUR AND SUSPENSE

The 39 Steps boasts plenty of humour, suspense and several sequences that are a great treat to watch more than 75 years later. How rare it is to see present-day filmmakers create stunning scenes that Hitchcock did, repeatedly, so many years earlier.

A chance encounter at a London music hall brings Richard Hannay (Robert Donat) together with the aptly named Miss Smith (Lucie Mannheim), a female spy for hire.

She tells him sensitive information is in danger of being smuggled out of England. When the woman is murdered in his apartment, Hannay is believed to be the killer. He finds a map of Scotland with a community circled in her hand. The race is on.

While eluding capture from police, Hannay goes searching for a quarry of his own -- those who want to make off with secrets vital to the British government.

He unwittingly walks right into the lair of Professor Jordan (Godfrey Tearle), a well-respected community leader who's good friends with police brass, and the top henchman.

MISTAKEN FOR A POLITICIAN

When Hannay is turned over to Scottish police, he escapes and takes refuge in a meeting hall. He's mistaken for the featured speaker at a political rally. What follows is one of The 39 Step's best scenes -- Hannay speaking from all-too-familiar first-hand knowledge of the little guy being persecuted. The crowd becomes wildly enthusiastic during his passionate, off-the-cuff address.

It's at that hall he's reunited with Pamela (Madeleine Carroll). She didn't believe his claims of innocence during an earlier meeting on a train and turned him in to police. There's some nice chemistry between the two, especially when they rent a room at an inn and are mistaken by the owners as illicit lovers having a fling.

When she learns he really is an innocent man on the run, Pamela helps him during a final showdown at another concert hall. Hitchcock used a similar setting for both his versions of The Man Who Knew Too Much. In The 39 Steps, the payoff is the staging of police moving in on Professor Jordan when the curtain literally comes down.

ASHCROFT IMPRESSES

Peggy Ashcroft impresses as a young wife of dour Scottish farmer. Her career would continue for almost another 55 years, including a major role in David Lean's A Passage to India (1984).

Watch for an impressive, quick shot of Hannay standing behind bars of a kitchen chair suggesting the very imprisonment he fears. There's a neat cut between Hannay's apartment building superintendent finding the dead woman's body and a train's whistle. Verbal jabs about clueless police and wisecracking audience members offer solid laughs.

The 39 Steps is great entertainment from one of the best directors ever.

RATING: 9/10

FUN FACTS: Donat appeared as the title character in Goodbye, Mr. Chips in 1939. The 39 Steps was Ashcroft's second film credit. John Laurie, who appeared as Ashcroft's husband, made his film debut in Hitchcock's Juno and the Paycock (1930).

The Man Who Knew Too Much: chills and laughs combine for great thriller

Director Alfred Hitchcock does an awful lot with this film's brief 75-minute running time.

There's about a dozen shots that either just look great or build suspense. This is a great early film from the British filmmaker's first decade of moviemaking and is highly recommended.

Lawrence and Jill (Leslie Banks and Edna Best), and daughter Betty (Nova Pilbeam), are in Switzerland on vacation.

When a friend is shot when dancing, he shares a secret with Jill in his dying moments. He's an agent with the British government and has learned about a plot to kill a European diplomat about to visit England.

Realizing Lawrence and Jill know about the assassination plot, the conspirators kidnap Betty.
She will be killed, they are told, if they reveal what they know to authorities. British investigators warn the couple if they don't talk, the politician's death could trigger violence on a scale equivalent to the First World War.

Lawrence and Betty's uncle, Clive (Hugh Wakefield), decide to find Betty on their own.
There's a couple of great shots in the office of dentist George Barber (Henry Oscar). Is Barber part of the plot? Does he mean to harm Lawrence? Two early, great shots take place in his office.

Hitchcock repeatedly cuts away from scenes where a character's fate, usually Betty's, is being discussed. This jars the audience and keeps them off-base. Hitchcock makes great use of silence too to build suspense or create a sense something particularly nasty is about to happen.

Hitchcock was known for having a standout scene or two in each film, such as Janet Leigh's demise in the shower in Psycho or Cary Grant being chased by a crop-dusting plane in North By Northwest.

In The Man Who Knew Too Much, Betty is pursued on a roof when she tries to escape. Silence is used here again to great effect.

Peter Lorre (Abbott) is the ringleader of the conspirators in his first English-language film. He drifts between menacing, check out his facial scar and hair, and charming. He gets some great lines too. The diplomat is to be killed during a concert's climatic moment at a major English venue. The assassin is told no one will hear his gunshot. "I think the composer would have appreciated that," Abbott says.

British police are portrayed as bumbling, unaware and unorganized in The Man Who Knew Too Much, a theme Hitchcock would repeat in other films. During a final confrontation with the conspirators, police must wait for weapons to arrive before they can return fire.

The first five minutes of The Man Who Knew Too Much were daunting. It was difficult to make out what the actors were saying. That, thankfully, stopped early on. If you can spot Hitchcock's cameo, well done! I had to rely on a cameo feature included in the Madacy release I watched.

This film, released in 1934, would be remade by Hitchcock in 1956 with James Stewart and Doris Day. It's been a few years since I watched the second film, but the original The Man Who Knew Too Much is solid viewing.

As of this writing, Nova Pilbeam is still alive. She turned 91 on Nov. 15, 2010. Pilbeam, who also appeared in Hitchcock's Young and Innocent, made her last film (The Three Weird Sisters) in 1948.

Screenwriter Charles Bennett worked on several other scripts for Hitchcock including Foreign Correspondent, Sabotage and Secret Agent.

Rating for The Man Who Knew Too Much: 9/10