The Times (06/Jun/1935) - "The Thirty-Nine Steps"
(c) The Times (06/Jun/1935)
- keywords: Alfred Hitchcock, Forth Bridge, Scotland, Frank Cellier, Godfrey Tearle, John Laurie, Madeleine Carroll, Peggy Ashcroft, Robert Donat, The 39 Steps (1935), Wylie Watson
NEW GALLERY
"THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS"
Readers may not find it easy to relate the Richard Hannay they knew in the novel to the humorous happy-go-lucky adventurer who goes by the same name in this film, but they are bound to condone the freedom of an adaptation which has produced such excellent results.
Mr. Alfred Hitchcock's treatment of the story gives us a first rate film of adventure edged with comedy; what in the theatre would be called a "comedy thriller." Its climax verges upon ingenuity of the kind that we resent, but by the time that it has been reached we have been much too, well entertained to think of resenting it. For the greater part of the film the ingenuity never fails to justify itself pictorially, and Mr. Robert Donat, who plays the amateur hunter of spies, and Miss Madeleine Carroll, as his unwilling companion in misfortune, know how to get the last ounce of excitement from an adventure approached humorously.
The sequence, in which Hannay shelters the woman spy in his London flat and falls under suspicion of having murdered her, is perhaps a little chilly in its conventionality, but once the double chase has begun, once the police get on Hannay's track, and he gets on the track of the master spy, Mr. Hitchcock takes and keeps a firm and highly individual grip of the story. The camera makes extraordinarily effective play with the police search of the Scotch express and with Hannay's escape among the girders of the Forth Bridge. In the Highlands it turns to account not only the rocks and waterfalls but the stillness of the hill recesses, and the episode of the avaricious crofter and his romantic wife, skilfully presented by Mr. John Laurie and Miss Peggy Ashcroft, is a genuine point of rest which enhances the excitement of the chase. Mr. Godfrey Tearle gives us the politeness and the ruthlessness of the chief spy; Mr. Frank Cellier the self-satisfaction of the sheriff who is too clever to perceive the truth when it is told to him; and Mr. Wylie Watson the comically mechanical make-up of the music hall memoriser through whom the Air Ministry's secrets are passed to the head of the Thirty-Nine Steps.
