39 Steps is not Hitch's best film, to be sure, but it is his first really good one. It's the film that really proved Hitch had an idea of what he was doing early on, he just didn't have his sure footing yet. It has many of the recognizable Hitchcock touches: an innocent man caught in a tale of intrigue, a ruthless villain who isn't seen much, and a blonde that becomes the love interest.
It also features probably the first great example of Hitchcock's MacGuffin, which is easily defined as the thing (object, person, anything) that motivates the plot, but the audience doesn't need to know what it is, only that it is essential it is obtained/stopped/whatever. The MacGuffin here isn't necessarily what The 39 Steps is, but what secret information they are trying to obtain.
We are introduced to Richard Hannay (Robert Donat), a Candian in London who attends a show where a gun shot is fired and panic breaks out. As he leaves, a young, sexy foreign woman asks to accompany him home to keep her safe from the men hunting her (you see, it was SHE that fired the gun). Hannay complies, and this is reason number one you don't take a mysterious, young, foreign, sexy woman home with you being hunted by spies. She divulges information about The 39 Steps, and the next morning she walks into Hannay's room with a knife in her back. Naturally, Hannay goes on the run because he has been framed for the murder, and to find out who is behind the secret organization.
Hitchcock uses the murder of a person to drive the plot, rather then what that key information is. Hannay spends much of the time on the run, and has a run-in with a blonde bombshell, Pamela (Madeleine Carroll), who doesn't believe him at first and keeps trying to turn him in. Slowly, of course, she comes round and eventually begins aiding him in his quest.
Hitch was a master at causing thrills, and none is more evident then in his brilliant set-up of his villain, Professor Jordan (Godfrey Tearle); Ms. Sexy Foreign spy tells Hannay that if he should ever run into a man with the top portion of his left pinky missing he had better run. Hitch finds something unique we won't forget, and when the Professor pulls out his hand and reveals the missing limb, it immediately instills the audience with a sense of danger. These classic methods are either gone or too rare for movies to deal with.
And here's the thing about the movie: it's thrilling, but at the same time it's not a completely stupid movie either. I definitely liked a lot more when I first saw it five or six years ago, but even on a second viewing (I had forgotten most of the movie by this point) I still found it engaging and entertaining. It's not as deep as one would like, which is typical of Hitchcock, but it is still smart.
It even takes a throw-away character, Mr. Memory (Wylie Watson) and uses him as a bookend piece AND an integral part to the story. Not a moment of this movie is wasted (thank goodness, since it is only 86 minutes!), and everything builds to its conclusion. I've seen a couple of Hitchcock's movies from the 30s, and I can say firmly this is the best of the bunch (of course I'm pending my upcoming viewing of The Lady Vanishes (1938), so that may change).
This is an important film for Hitchcock, and essential for any cinephile or Hitch lover. I'll reiterate again that this is by no means his best movie, but it certainly is the one that launched his career. Hitchcock wouldn't hit his stride until the 50s, when he churned out three or four masterpieces (the pinnacle of his career), but all the films leading up to that point are worth a look, if only to see how someone defines their style. I make it no secret that Alfred Hitchcock is my favorite director, because of his off-screen personality, and because of his unique dose of thrills.
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