Tuesday, 18 August 2015

The 39 Steps (1935 Alfred Hitchcock)

Thoroughly enjoyable and sharp as a tack, film was interrupted by my several cries of  "Brilliant!" like some over-enthused opera fan shouting "Brava!" throughout a Puccini. Based loosely on a John Buchan novel, written by Charles Bennett and Ian Hay, features characters who variously help (milkman, crofter's wife Peggy Ashcroft, couple who run hotel) and thwart (Madeline Carroll, John Laurie's crofter) our wrong man on the run.

The crofter's wife is lying saying her husband won't beat her - that's exactly what he does (offscreen).

Powell would have seen this before Edge of the World (just a thought), also cut by this editor D.N. Twist.

Much use of cocky audiences; film is packed full of highlights such as travelling underwear salesman, sound of sheep emanating through moors chase scene, lovely moment where wife of villain comes and says nothing about the gun he's holding, handcuffs (and in the final shot).

Photographed by Bernard Knowles.

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