I'd Love to Turn You On At the Movies #116 - The 39 Steps (1935, dir. Alfred Hitchcock)

“How old is Mae West?!?”

            The world may never know how old Mae West was (or rather they will, as this IS the age of the internet), but this film is packed with a wide array of other perplexing mysteries. Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps is widely considered to be one of the integral films that sparked the Master of Suspense’s career, and with good reason. While he had been making films for some time (this being his 22^nd), The 39 Steps was one of the great films that catapulted Hitchcock into the spotlight and paved the way for his later masterworks. But that’s enough about the prophetic nature of the film. Let’s get down to brass tacks – this movie is fantastic! From the beginning of the opening sequence until the very end Hitchcock strategically places his audience in a tense state and he never fully reveals exactly what's going on (or does he...?).

            Put very simply the film’s plot is about a grave accusation of murder landing upon a completely innocent bystander. Hannay, played by Robert Donat, comes in coincidental contact with a mysterious female spy, "Miss Smith" (Lucie Mannheim). Providing her asylum in his apartment overnight he awakens to find her stumbling into his bedroom after being stabbed in the back and warning that he is next. After a brief commotion he realizes that he is now the target of her murderers as well as the police who have been alerted to the murder in his apartment. From this point, out of sheer necessity, Hannay himself becomes entangled in the espionage that got Miss Smith killed in the first place. Picking up where she left off he rushes to Scotland in an attempt to solve the mystery and exonerate himself. Along the way he runs into an obstinate yet beautiful woman on a train, Pamela (Madeleine Carroll), who turns him in to the authorities. After narrowly escaping the police at this turn, he seeks who he believes to be a friend of Miss Smith’s who as it turns out might not be so friendly. At this point in the plot everything becomes beautifully convoluted and the mystery enters its ascent to the climax. Needless to say much of what we know at this point changes and our obstinate beauty, Pamela, will certainly return to become an integral part of the film.

 

            While this is most certainly an early film for Hitchcock, originally released in 1935, it provides the viewer with a perfect roadmap into the mind of an amazing and enigmatic auteur. The viewer is left with a good number of questions at the end and spends the entirety of the film on the edge of their seats. Aided by the shadowy noir-ish cinematography, the use of odd close ups that seem to allude to something (dun-dun-duuuunnnn!), and the lack at any point of a FULL reveal, Hitchcock is able to build tension like no one else. In addition to the brilliant building of tension and the constant suspense, in true Hitchcockian tradition the director completely breeds a deep audience mistrust of all of the characters on screen (aside from the hero of course). These techniques, which will become vitally important to Hitchcock’s oeuvre, are perfectly demonstrated in this early classic.

            But what makes this film, as well as other early/early-mid Hitchcock films, so magnetically engaging is the fact that while he perfectly weaves tension and mistrust into the psyche of the viewer there remains a healthy dose of sly comedy. While we know very little about the hero of this story, Hannay, one thing is sure – he is a quick wit and an amusing gentleman. For example, as Hannay has been captured and rides in the back of the detective’s car, they run into a flock of sheep in the road at which point he quips, "Hello, what are we stopping for? Oh it's a whole flock of detectives." With such amazing and well timed sarcatic one liners the viewer is provided with just enough comedy to catch them off guard when the next plot twist drops (and there are more twists dropped in this film than bass drops in a Skrillex song).

            So what else can I say, you simply must take this ride for yourself. Ride the rails though every twist and turn and see if you can put together the puzzle that is The 39 Steps. What exactly is/are the 39 steps? Who is the real "bad guy"? Who can Hannay and Pamela trust? What will happen in the end? How old is Mae West?! What causes Pip in poultry?!?! These questions and many more are proposed by and possibly answered in this fantastic film from the mid 30's; do yourself a favor and check it out.

- Edward Hill

I'd Love to Turn You On - At the Movies #20 - Shadow of a Doubt (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1943)

Alfred Hitchcock may be one of the best-known directors in the world, but this film – one he often referred to as his favorite of his own films – seems to have been forgotten as one of his best, a masterpiece on par with his more widely known and loved films likeNorth By Northwest, Rear Window, Vertigo, and Psycho. To sum up the film’s plot is simple – a man who is possibly a murderer runs from the city police on his trail to hide out in his relatives’ small hometown. There his niece, and also his namesake, begins to suspect that he’s not friendly Uncle Charlie after all. But the plot description can barely begin to convey the feeling of the film and the way it’s shot.
This film, his sixth after moving to the United States from England, can be said to be the first of his American films that’s really his own, after several assignments from his studio on which he managed to put his mark, but didn’t carry through from conception to finished product. Written by Thornton Wilder, Sally Benson, and Hitchcock’s wife Alma Reville, this film is a precursor to such modern portraits of suburban malaise as Blue Velvet, where corruption and evil lurk just underneath the veneer of respectable society. Here, Uncle Charlie arrives by train, faking an illness so he doesn’t have to interact with the train’s other passengers (including Hitchcock in his cameo) and as the train pulls into town the skies fill with black smoke (more accurately – the screen fills with smoke) while a shadow from the train engulfs the Newton family he’s come to visit. His niece Charlotte, also called Charlie by the family, has nearly willed him into existence in their hometown, feeling that things have become stagnant and boring in their small-town life (“A family should be the most wonderful thing in the world, and this family’s just gone to pieces”) and that they need a good shake-up from the urbane, sophisticated Uncle Charlie. She doesn’t realize quite what a shake-up she’ll get and that she may be inviting the notorious Merry Widow murderer into their household. (Patricia Hitchcock noted about her father’s ideas for this film – “He loved the thought of bringing menace into a small town.”) Throughout the film Hitchcock made an effort to strengthen ties between Young Charlie and Uncle Charlie, starting with their names and their positions laying on beds as they’re introduced to the audience, continuing through Young Charlie saying that they’re “like twins” and beyond to when the murderer decides that he may stay on longer than anticipated and Young Charlie threatens him with “I’ll kill you myself,” thereby directly linking her to murderous impulses. It’s a doubling motif common to Hitchcock, where a character’s dark mirror image isn’t too far from the supposedly good character – think of Bruno and Guy inStrangers on a Train or Norman Bates saying “we all go a little mad sometimes” – and he plays it to the hilt here, reflecting Charlie in Charlie at every turn. I could go on about how Uncle Charlie is frequently associated with smoke and shade, but his most sinister moment is once Young Charlie is certain that he’s the killer and her detective boyfriend drives away while Uncle Charlie looms in the background of the frame in full daylight, making the porch of her own home an unsafe haven.

The film is hugely effective as one of Hitch’s best suspense pieces as Young Charlie tries frantically to find out if her beloved uncle may indeed be a cold-blooded killer. But it’s also got Hitchcock’s characteristic gallows humor, with Young Charlie’s dad and his best friend constantly joking about methods of murdering each other, with Young Charlie’s younger sister Ann providing hilarious know-it-all moments, and with Young Charlie’s mother oblivious to any sinister goings-on. It’s also an interesting look at the family unit, where even after Uncle Charlie’s vile speech about “useless” women at the dinner table, his sister is broken-down at the thought of his leaving them to their boring old lives again. It truly is one of Hitch’s best of his many terrific films.
-Patrick