In this golden age of home viewing, the Criterion Collection still provides some of the best editions of the best movies ever released, usually with a rich selection of extras and often including audio commentaries (a feature they pioneered, and perhaps the greatest gift ever to film students and cinephiles alike). This column features one Criterion release per week, based entirely on where my interests lead me.
I last saw The 39 Steps ages ago, so when I decided to rewatch it recently I was a bit fuzzy about the mechanics of the plot (like what the 39 steps refers to). What I did remember were the many great details that make this the quintessential early Hitchcock film. Such as: the very specific framing of the music hall scenes, the way an important character’s identity is revealed, the racy undertones of the dinner in the crofter’s hut (and the unfortunate aftermath), the fortunate placement of a hymnal, the nonsensical and improvised political speech that gets applause all the same—a less skillful director could have conveyed the same information contained in these scenes is a less memorable way, but Hitchcock chose nonobvious methods that made each of them special. The screenplay by Charles Bennett and Ian Hay is also loaded with offhand remarks that prove to be prophetic, making this film particularly good for rewatching.
Not that there’s anything wrong with the plot of The 39 Steps, which is based on a thriller (a good read and an even better listen, by the way) by John Buchan, a remarkable personage who, among other things, practiced law, wrote 29 novels and 42 non-fiction books, served as Head of Intelligence for Britain during World War I, and served as Governor General Canada from 1935 until his death in 1940. Early in the film, central character Richard Hannay (Robert Donat) allows himself to be picked up by an attractive woman, Annabella Smith (Lucie Mannheim) at the music hall, and soon finds himself dragged into an international political intrigue. He’s something of a forerunner of Cary Grant’s character in North by Northwest: an ordinary guy who gets mistaken for a secret agent and is soon fighting for his life in a world he doesn’t understand and in which everything seems to be stacked against him.
The unfortunate Miss Smith, who confides in Hannay that she works for the highest bidder, doesn’t make it through the night. Hannay sees she has marked a particular place on a map of Scotland, so he heads north on the Flying Scotsman to find it, narrowly escaping the police in the process. They continue to pursue him, in part by autogiro (a sort of helicopter), and at one point he finds himself handcuffed to an attractive woman named Pamela (Madeleine Carroll), making her the first in a long line of icy blondes featured in Hitchcock films.
The 39 Steps is a proper thriller, fast-paced and loaded with both perils (in interesting locations, including a moving train and the Scottish Highlands) and comic set-pieces, all motivated by a classic MacGuffin whose importance is revealed at the very end of the film. Hannay is something of a blank character—he exudes the essence of cool but acts without obvious motivation—while he’s more definitively introduced in the book. At first I thought this was a black mark against this film, but after this viewing I decided it’s a wise move by the screenwriters: making Hannay an uncomplicated man of action perfectly suits the thriller mode and avoids slowing things down by getting into his personality and background and all the things that make modern detective novels so long. | Sarah Boslaugh
Spine #: 56
Technical details: 86 min.; B&W; screen ratio 1.33:1; English.
Edition reviewed: DVD (1 disc).
Extras: audio commentary by Hitchcock scholar Marian Keane; “Hitchcock: The Early Years,” a 2000 Carlton International Media documentary about Hitchcock’s British films; 1966 television interview of Hitchcock by Mike Scott; 1937 Lux Radio Theatre adaption with Ida Lupino and Robert Montgomery; “The Borders of the Possible, a visual essay by Hitchcock scholar Leonard Leff; excerpts of the 1962 Hitchcock-Truffaut interviews discussing The 39 Steps; production design sketches by art director O. Werndorff; illustrated booklet with essay by David Cairns.
Fun Fact: You may remember from your high school English class that Holden Caulfield and his little Sister Phoebe, protagonist and supporting character in J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, was a great admirer of this film. That’s not enough to win me over to his Holden’s cause, but it’s a point in his favor all the same, particularly since it wasn’t as easy to watch old movies in 1951 as it is today.
Parting Thought: Hitchcock makes much use of newspapers to convey information to the characters, which was a realistic option when they were ubiquitous in most people’s lives. It may also be a convention left over from his days directing silents, but I always appreciate when information is delivered visually rather than through spoken expo-dump. Since paper-and-ink newspapers are no longer common in many countries (I haven’t had one around since the RTF died), will something else take their place and fulfill this function—social media on people’s phones, perhaps?
