The 39 Steps (1935)

From my favorite movies..

Don't listen to the negative reviews

Brilliant and touching

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

This adventure-comedy-romance throws an unwitting hero into an unexpected caper, it's a clear predecessor to North by Northwest. It's one of the earliest examples of how Hitchcock used the camera in inventive & compelling fashion in order to help tell the story. Donat is a great mixture of William Powell's smug humor, Cary Grant's charming befuddlement, & Harrison Ford's brutish determination; the further in his story goes, the more hopeless his plight seems.

The 39 Steps is a great early Hitchcock pot-boiler. This is what every "masala film" should aspire to be.Every twist in the film is an event in itself. the plot isn't really that important but the ending is ingenious. The Mr.Memory character is a great creation.It is amazing how much Hitchcock packs into an 86 minute film. The melancholic housewife in the Scottish highlands who longs for the city life and her strict religious husband - what a strange choice of characters to make an appearance in an exciting film like this. I never saw that coming. They are a perfect foil for the gung-ho bar running couple who appear towards the end of the film. Both couples provide shelter to the man on the run, of course.The writing is unbelievably clever. Every scene is adorned with witty and tongue in cheek dialog. I guess The Third Man borrowed the bit with the man on the run entering a meeting and talking to an unsuspecting audience to escape the police from this film.The 39 Steps proudly wears its contrivances on its sleeve.The choices of camera angles at the beginning and ending of the film are very stylish.(8/10)

It is often said that in old movies, even husbands and wives had to sleep in twin beds, and if both got on the same bed, at least one foot of one person had to be on the floor. Actually, if that was a rule, it was never written down, because it is nowhere to be found in the Production Code. And if it was a rule, it was not followed in this 1935 movie, because an unmarried man and woman get in a double bed and spend the night with all four feet on the bed. Part of the reason may have to do with the fact that the movie was made in the United Kingdom. Maybe their censorship rules were different, and America just went along. Also, it probably helped that the man and woman are antagonistic toward each other, sleeping together only because of handcuffs, so that there is not the slightest suggestion that they will have sex with each other.At the end of the movie, Hannay calls out to Mr. Memory during a performance, asking, "What are the 39 steps?" to which Mr. Memory begins to answer before he is shot, thereby leading to the capture of the man who shot him, who heads the organization of spies. We have to wonder why Mr. Memory started answering the question. We suspect there are two reasons: first, Mr. Memory was a somewhat unwilling participant in the spy ring (blackmail?); and second, his pride in being able to answer any factual question that was put to him made him unable to say, "I don't know."But that started me thinking. This is not the only Hitchcock movie in which a villain blurts out the truth even though in so doing he provides information that could or does lead to his undoing. In "Spellbound" (1945), Constance (Ingrid Bergman) gets her colleague, Dr. Murchison (Leo G. Carroll), to help her figure out the meaning of a dream, which he does, thereby incriminating himself. In "Shadow of a Doubt" (1943), Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotton), the Merry Widow murderer, vehemently expresses his disgust for foolish widows at the dinner table. In "Frenzy" (1972), Blaney (Jon Finch) is being hunted by the police for being the Necktie Strangler. He turns to Rusk (Barry Foster) for help, not realizing that Rusk himself is the Necktie Strangler. While they are talking, Rusk says with a hostile tone in his voice that some of these women who are raped and murdered get exactly what is coming to them, but Blaney is too distracted to notice.And come to think of it, I suppose we all have had moments when we blurted out something incriminating, when we could have simply kept our big mouths shut.

Hitchcock made this movie three times: the first was released in 1935 called "The 39 Steps", the second in 1942 called "Saboteur", and the third in 1959 named "North by Northwest".The basic ingredients are: (1) A lonely man wrongfully accused of something he didn't do. (2) His wanting to have himself in the clear. (3) His incapacity of turning his case over to justice. (4) His pursuit of the party who incriminated him. (5) His involvement in between with a blond girl that he can't trust. (6) His final encounter with his nemesis, preferably at a spectacular site."The 39 Steps" is truly a masterpiece, for it is still mesmerizes you in spite of being filmed 80 years ago! Which other movie that old does that? None whatsoever, I dare you. (The next likely candidate, "The Lady Vanishes" was only released three years later, and was directed by the Master of Suspense as well.)Now, "North by Northwest" would have been this masterpiece, had it not been preceded by "The 39 Steps". "Noth by Northwest" has some unforgettable moments as the pesticide aircraft chase, but the plot is anything but new."Saboteur" differs from the other two pictures in being excessively patriotic and antifascist, somewhat of war propaganda, shot during WWII as it was. It does have some exciting moments, but having seen the other two movies in the "trilogy", it just sticks out as the lesser attempt of them.