The 39 Steps ***** (1935, Robert Donat, Madeleine Carroll, Lucie Mannheim, Godfrey Tearle, Wylie Watson, John Laurie, Peggy Ashcroft, Helen Haye, Miles Malleson) – Classic Movie Review 119

Alfred Hitchcock’s beguiling 1935 spy thriller film The 39 Steps rattles along in a luxury-class ride. Robert Donat is wonderfully suave and assured as Richard Hannay running for his life from a nest of spies and the law.

Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 freewheeling film version of the 1915 espionage novel The Thirty-Nine Steps by the Scottish author John Buchan is a most beguiling romantic comedy spy thriller. The 39 Steps (1935) rattles along its cast-iron tracks in a luxury-class ride. Directed by Hitchcock with the greatest brio, pace and imagination, this Thirties British classic justifies its reputation with dialogue that crackles and acting that is a benchmark for alluring style.

Robert Donat is wonderfully suave and assured as Richard Hannay, a Canadian visitor to London. He is the quintessential innocent hero running for his life from both a nest of spies and the forces of the law after the murder of a young mystery woman, ‘Miss Smith’ (Lucie Mannheim), in his London flat. The police think he’s done it, the spies know he hasn’t but need to kill him anyway.

As the going gets tough, Hannay gets involved with a reluctant Pamela (archetypal ice-cool blonde Madeleine Carroll), taking her prisoner to guarantee his safety. Then he gets provocatively, and fetishistically, handcuffed to Carroll – very saucily for the day, even in bed. And Carroll proves every inch Donat’s match for confident, graceful acting. For a while, she doesn’t believe he’s innocent, but eventually succumbs to his charms and credibility. Well, he’s the hero, isn’t he?

Despite the dark, dangerous and disturbing events the story chronicles, the surface mood is jaunty and jolly, but the film has a disturbing undercurrent of betrayal, death and chaos.

The 39 Steps is one long ride of famous key Hitchcock moments: gunfire and panic at the theatre, the London Palladium climax, the revelation of the missing finger of the villain, Professor Jordan (Godfrey Tearle), the steam train escape and chase on Edinburgh’s Forth Rail Bridge, the crucial music-hall stage act of Mr Memory (Wylie Watson), a sudden stabbing, a weird, jealous Scots crofter (John Laurie) and his helpful much younger wife (Peggy Ashcroft), the hero and reluctant heroine sharing apparently unwanted intimacies in a hotel room, and so on.

Hitchcock obviously liked The 39 Steps and revisited the film’s innocent man on the run themes and style for Saboteur (1942) and most notably for his 1959 American classic North by Northwest, trying to improve on them with his big Hollywood budget. In some ways he succeeded, but in another sense The 39 Steps is an incomparable marvel.

Hitchcock is the master showman and puppet master here, but we should name check writers Charles Bennett (who adapted the novel) and Ian Hay (who provided the dialogue) for their dazzlingly adroit screenplay. Hitchcock and his wife Alma Reville also worked on the screenplay, as usual.

As the music hall announcer, esteemed character actor and screenwriter Miles Malleson gets two lines at the end as the Palladium manager and no credit after it. Hitchcock makes his traditional cameo appearance, cynically throwing litter by the music hall.

Also in the cast are Helen Haye, Frank Cellier, Gus MacNaughton, Jerry Verno, Peggy Simpson, Ivor Barnard, Wilfrid Brambell, Pat Hagate, Elizabeth Inglis, Frederick Piper, Hilda Trevelyan and John Turnbull.

Hitchcock explained: ‘I am out to give the public good, healthy mental shake-ups. Civilisation has become so screening and sheltering that we cannot experience sufficient thrills at first hand. Therefore, to prevent our becoming sluggish and jellified, we have to experience them artificially.’

The 39 Steps was re-released in cinemas in a lovely restored new 35mm print in 1999 as part of the celebrations for the centenary of Hitchcock’s birth.

There are three other film adaptations. The Thirty-Nine Steps was remade in colour in 1959 with Kenneth More as The 39 Steps, again in 1978 with Robert Powell as The Thirty Nine Steps, and as a BBC TV movie The 39 Steps in 2008 with Rupert Penry-Jones as Hannay.

Buchan’s book is the first of five novels featuring Richard Hannay. He wrote it while recuperating from illness at a house called St Cuby, Cliff Promenade, Broadstairs, where there was a wooden staircase leading down to the beach. His daughter, who was about six and had just learnt to count properly, went down the steps and announced ‘there are 39 steps’. The house was demolished and a section of the stairs, with a brass plaque, was sent to Buchan. They were replaced by concrete, and this set of steps still runs from the garden to the beach.

Buchan described The Thirty-Nine Steps as a ‘shocker’, an adventure where the events in the story are unlikely and the reader is only just able to believe that they really happened. The plot is busy, inventive and exciting, but it does stretch belief to the limit, particularly at the far-fetched climax, so it is no wonder that Hitchcock made so many changes, including the introduction of a glamorous heroine and a romantic subplot, Hannay’s escape from the train on the Forth Bridge, and the music-hall finale with Mr Memory. Admittedly, though, Hitchcock always did this with his source novels, routinely using them just as starting points, and invariably infuriating the authors.

The Thirty-Nine Steps is a great title, but Buchan has a hard task working it into this story, and Hitchcock abandons his explanation for another, equally far-fetched explanation.

Hitchcock’s film is still regarded as the superior film version and Buchan’s book is still admired, featuring on the BBC’s 2003 The Big Read poll of the UK’s best-loved novels.

The cast are Robert Donat as Richard Hannay, Madeleine Carroll as Pamela, Lucie Mannheim as Annabella Smith, Godfrey Tearle as Professor Jordan, Peggy Ashcroft as the crofter’s wife Margaret, John Laurie as the crofter John,  Helen Haye as the professor’s wife Mrs Louisa Jordan, Frank Cellier as Sheriff Watson, Wylie Watson as Mr Memory, Gus McNaughton as Commercial Traveller, Jerry Verno as Commercial Traveller, Peggy Simpson as Maid, Matthew Boulton as Fake Policeman, Frederick Piper as Milkman, Ivor Barnard as Political Meeting Chairman, Elizabeth Inglis as Professor Jordan’s daughter Pat, Jerry Verno, Peggy Simpson, Wilfrid Brambell, Pat Hagate, Hilda Trevelyan and John Turnbull.

Hitchcock: ‘For me, the cinema is not a slice of life, but a piece of cake.’

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© Derek Winnert 2013 Classic Movie Review 119 derekwinnert.com

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The 1915 first edition of The Thirty-Nine Steps.