Hitchcock’s British Films

The 39 Steps (1935)

The 39 Steps is Hitchcock’s most popular British film. Ralph Thomas remade it, with Kenneth More in the Robert Donat role, dooming himself to an eternity of unfavorable comparisons. Hitchcock’s film also suffers from its reputation as entertainment. John Russell Taylor makes a typical assumption: “Any idea of the film’s being an allegory of good and evil—any more than any conflict between hero and villain, us and them, can be interpreted in this light— seems to me quite unnecessary and at odds with the general impression the film creates on the mind.”1 The story line is so thrilling that it takes a real effort to engage with the film’s patterns and themes. The sensational experience quite overwhelms the analytical. But the sensational entertainment is not all there is. A viewer cannot fairly assume that his first take on a work exhausts it, that in the ninety-minute traffic of the stage he has absorbed all that the director and his crew could have implanted there. “The general impression the film creates on the mind” can’t cover it. Richard Hannay (Robert Donat) is a Canadian holidaying in London . At a music hall performance by Mr. Memory (Wylie Watson), a skirmish erupts between a guard and an audience member. After two shots are fired, the audience rushes out. Hannay is accompanied home The 39 Steps 1935 147 The 39 Steps by a strange German lady who claims to have fired the shots in order to escape two men who are trying to prevent her from telling the authorities a secret message vital to England’s air defense. The next morning Hannay finds her dead in his flat. He flees, pursued by the foreign agents and the police, who suspect him of the lady’s murder. Each refuge Hannay finds becomes a greater danger. He feigns friendship with a beautiful blonde in the railway car, Pamela (Madeleine Carroll), but she turns him over to the police. A dour crofter (John Laurie) is cruelly jealous of his wife (Peggy Ashcroft). The urbane country squire, Professor Jordan (Godfrey Tearle), turns out to be the gang leader. The sheriff (Frank Cellier) pretends to believe Hannay’s story, then gives him to the spies. After an awkward period of being handcuffed together, Hannay wins Pamela’s trust. Back at the Palladium, Mr. Memory clears up the mystery before being shot by Professor Jordan. For all its thrills, the film has at least three themes. In one, a chaotic world returns to harmony and order. Another is the growth of the Donat and Carroll characters as they handle the upsets of their lives. A third theme reflects on the function of storytelling. In the opening sequence, visitor Hannay is drawn to a theater’s brightness and community. A quick montage conveys Hannay’s perspective as he buys a ticket, then we watch him enter the music hall. The show will end in chaos, but the theater offers refuge from the city’s loneliness and confusion. Nor is this the exclusive trait of city life. The episode at the crofter’s, where “the Lord made the country,” offers as much danger and alienation as the city does. The first Mr. Memory scene is a familiar Hitchcock exposure of people displaying their narrow self-concern. Inviting questions from the floor, Mr. Memory uncovers a mine of personal obsessions. “How old is Mae West?” To one lad “cup” can only refer to football. “Where’s my old man been since last Saturday?” “What causes pip in poultry?” a timid thin man asks, despite his wife’s “Don’t make yourself common !” Pip is a common poultry problem but is also suggestive of venereal disease.2 Even Hannay draws his question from his own experience (“How far is Winnipeg from Montreal?”). The only serious question is the poultryman’s, and that is called common. For everyone else the invitation to test Mr. Memory is the questioner’s chance to show off. Hitchcock’s British Films 148 In a parallel conversation on the train, two traveling salesmen reduce world concerns to the girdles and bras they sell. “Is there no honesty in the world?” The reference is not to the front-page news of the murder or the spy threat to the country but to a commercial rival. Hannay reacts to the female agent with bored disinterest, as if he has been numbed by the city’s sensations and chaos: she: Can I come home with...