© 2007 William Ahearn
“The 39 Steps” is a rarity in the world of Hitchcock:
The film is actually better than the book. John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine
Steps was a bestseller in its time – and stuck in its time it is –
with conspiratorial rants against Jews and disparaging riffs against Italians
and just about anyone else who isn’t blessed to be British. While the
film moves along nicely, the book is a bit plodding and even less believable
than the film. Essential elements were changed – such as what exactly
the 39 steps might be – and, of course, the addition of a romantic foil
for the hero. This is the first sound film (“Young and Innocent,”
“Saboteur,” etc.) that will feature the innocent man on the run
who will wear handcuffs at some point and with a romantic interest that is
at first antagonistic and then head-over-heels in love with the hero, chasing
a Macguffin through or to a monument (in this case, The Albert Hall) to resolve
the reasons why the police are after the hero so the hero and the girl can
be married.
That said, “The 39 Steps” is the best of this kind of
Hitchcock film.
“The Lady Vanishes” is also a spy film of sorts and a
tad creaky but a lot of fun in the way that old movies can be. More diverting
and entertaining than “The 39 Steps,” it would be a flick for
a rainy Sunday when you don’t want to think about too much.
“The Secret Agent” is based on W. Somerset Maugham’s
Ashenden and was the first spy novel to suggest that intelligence agencies
weren’t all that bright at times. Maugham’s book would inspire
Eric Ambler, Graham Greene, and numerous others to take a more jaundiced eye
at the spying business. Even so, it’s a bit murky and not as nuanced
as one would like a serious spy story.
“The Man Who Knew Two Much” was the first of Hitchcock’s
spy films and it’s a winner. Here we see – under all the domestic
and good will win over evil nonsense – how Hitchcock can use cinema.
And Peter Lorre to boot.
“Topaz” is absolute junk. A boring, plodding, uninteresting
film about the Cuban Missile Crisis and a spy ring in France. Read the real
material about the Sapphire spy ring and forget this film.
“Torn Curtain” is another miss. Starring Paul
Newman and a completely miscast Julie Andrews, it tells the story of a scientist
who pretends to defect to East Germany to learn what the East German scientists
know about making hydrogen bombs, nerve gas or the secret formula of Yoo Hoo
chocolate drink. Who cares? Hitchcock fans will point to the drawn-out scene
of the killing of the Stasi agent and the escape on the bus as “pure
cinema” but both of those scenes are from World War II and not the East
Germany of the mid-1960s. The literature of defectors in the annals of espionage
is rich in material and one only has to Google "Yuri Nosenko" to
see how bizarre and hallucinatory the mind games can be. It’s a silly
and stupid film and it just amazes me at times that Hitchcock actually involved
himself in this kind of terrible material.