A winter and spring and summer of being unable to attend movie theaters has caused The Grandstander to seek out older movies that he either hasn't seen in a long time or, as is the case today, has never seen. Thanks to the recommendations of Movie Maven pals Jason Fraley and Bob Cassinelli, as well as the folks at TCM and my DVR, today I took in an Alfred Hitchcock classic from 1935, "The 39 Steps" starring Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll. Many of the critical commentaries that you find on line will tell you that this film might well be Hitchcock's best film of his British, pre-Hollywood era.
In this one, Donat plays a Canadian citizen in London. While patronizing a music hall, a shooting takes place, a strange woman pleas for Donat to take her to his place where she tells him of a plot by an organization called The 39 Steps to smuggle some sort of government secrets out of the country to some unnamed foreign power. The woman winds up dead, Donat is accused of the murder, a chase then takes place aboard a train and on foot across the Scottish moors, he becomes handcuffed to a mysterious blonde who betrays him, then falls for him, all while encountering various smarmy and odd and possibly downright evil folks along the way. Don't want to go into how Donat and Carroll end up handcuffed, but it leads to a scene where she needs to remove her stockings that is pretty damned funny.
Sound familiar? It has all the elements that would become Hitchcock trademarks throughout the remainder of his filmmaking career. The honest-man-wrongly-accused, the icy blonde, and not one, but two, MacGuffins ("secret plans" and "the 39 steps"), and a cameo by the director himself. One essay that I found online about this move said the the Cary Grant/Eva Marie Saint/Hitchcock classic "North by Northwest" was, essentially, a modern day jazzed up remake of "The 39 Steps", and it's hard to argue the point.
A look at IMDB will tell you that "The 39 Steps" has been remade at least three different times over the years. All appear to have been British productions.
Glad I saw this one. Wouldn't rate it among my Top Five of Hitch classics, but it nonetheless gets Three Stars from The Grandstander.
No comments:
Post a Comment