The 39 Steps [Criterion Collection] [Blu-ray]

Overview

Though a relatively early entry in Hitchcock's development as a master of suspenseful thrillers, 39 Steps remains one of the director's best, with its innovative film editing techniques and classic Hitchcockian theme of an innocent, ordinary man finding himself in an extraordinary situation where he is forced to fight for his life and honor when the world he thought he knew suddenly becomes a foreign, threatening place. It all begins in an English music hall where clamorous vaudeville acts perform over the vague hum of the audience. Then the amazing Mr. Memory steps up on the stage. Midway through his act, just after he has asked the audience for questions, Canadian rancher Richard Hannay, arises and asks a question. Suddenly a shot rings out and sets off a stampede of audience members. Amidst the turmoil, Hannay sees a terrified young woman. He rescues her and then takes the shaken lady to his apartment to cool down. There the girl, Miss Smith, tells Hannay about a number of highly classified secrets that are about to be smuggled out of England. She tells him of an enemy superspy who can be recognized by the partially amputated pinky on his right hand and then says something about the title steps before falling silent and heading off to sleep in the guest bedroom. Hannay's ordeal begins with the discovery that someone murdered Miss Smith while he slept. In her hand is a map to Scotland. Grabbing it, Hannay flees and gets on a Scotland-bound train. It doesn't take long for the police to get involved and naturally he is their prime suspect. Word travels fast and Hannay is terrified that detectives will take him to prison. He panics when he learns a pair of gumshoes have boarded the train and are looking for him. His flight aboard the train leads him to the arms of the icy, blonde and beautiful Pamela. He quickly explains his situation and begs her assistance. As the detectives walk by, he grabs Pamela and gives her a red-hot kiss. Unfortunately, Pamela is not a good sport and escapes the embrace, calling the detectives over. Desperately, Hannay dives out of the speeding train and clings onto the outside handrails and windows until the train screeches to its halt on a long bridge. Hannay makes a hair-raising escape. During his flight, Hannay is forced to don several disguises, providing the film with occasional bursts of humor. But no matter where he goes, the detectives dog him. They eventually capture him after he again runs into Pamela. By the time he escapes once again, Hannay and the reluctant blonde are handcuffed together. Eventually she comes to believe his story and together they rush off to solve the mystery of the 39 steps. Their investigation leads Hannay back to the very same place where his ordeal began. Hitchcock's use of lightning quick cuts, quickly moves the action from one scene to the next and helps draw the audience into a situation where it is both an observer and an illusory participant in the action.

Product Details

Release Date:	06/26/2012
UPC:	0715515096317
Original Release:	1935
Source:	Criterion Collection
Region Code:	A
Presentation:	[B&W]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Mono]
Language:	English
Time:	1:26:00
Sales rank:	8,957

Special Features

•New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural
•Audio commentary by Alfred Hitchcock scholar Marian Keane
•Hitchcock: The Early Years (2000), a British documentary
•Original footage from broadcaster Mike Scott's 1966 TV interview with Hitchcock
•Complete broadcast of the 1937 Lux Radio Theatre adaptation
•Visual essay by Hitchcock scholar Leonard Leff
•Excerpts from Francois Truffaut's 1962 audio interview with Hitchcock
•Original production design drawings
•English subtitles for the deaf and hearing impaired
•PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic David Cairns

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Robert Donat	Richard Hannay
Madeleine Carroll	Pamela
Godfrey Tearle	Prof. Jordan
Lucie Mannheim	Smith
Peggy Ashcroft	Margaret
John Laurie	John
Helen Haye	Mrs. Jordan
Wylie Watson	Memory
Frank Cellier	Watson
Peggy Simpson	Young Maid
Gus McNaughton	Voyager
Jerry Verno	Voyager
Miles Malleson	Director of the Palladium
Ivor Barnard	Political Meeting Chairman
Wallace Bosco	Palladium Doorman
Matthew Boulton	Fake Police Officer
Carleton Hobbs	Fake Policeman #2
Vida Hope	Usherette
Elizabeth Inglis	Pat, Professor Jordan's Daughter
Quinton McPherson	Clergyman on the Flying Scotsman
Frederick Piper	The Milkman
Hilda Trevelyan	Innkeeper's Wife
Marianne Stone	Actor
Jack Beaver	Composer
Louis Levy	Composer
Hubert Bath	Composer

Technical Credits

Alma Reville

Charles Bennett

Ian Hay

Alfred Hitchcock	Director
Alma Reville	Screenwriter
Charles Bennett	Screenwriter
Ian Hay	Screenwriter
Michael Balcon	Producer
Ivor Montagu	Producer
Jack Whitehead	Special Effects

Editorial Reviews

Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps firmly established the director's reputation beyond the boundaries of the British isles, but it did far more than that: it was also the film where Hitchcock's reach and grasp as a filmmaker began growing by leaps and bounds. He'd already made three excellent thrillers (The Lodger (1926), Blackmail (1929), and The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)) that had attracted considerable attention in America, but The 39 Steps, as a piece of screencraft, assembled all the best elements in those widely scattered successes (spread across eight years of his career) between two covers in a way that riveted audiences and industry observers. It played exactly the way that British movies weren't supposed to, lively and piercingly funny, rather than stodgy and dignified; it was almost as much a comedy as a thriller, which was something new in any country's cinema; and it was almost as much a battle of the sexes in the jousting of its two leads (Robert Donat, Madeleine Carroll) as it was a quest by the hero to prove his innocence of a murder charge; by the end of the movie, we want to see not only how Richard Hanney (Donat) proves his innocence but also how he and Pamela (Carroll) manage to stay together. Not coincidentally, The 39 Steps was also the first of his major films in which Hitchcock ripped up and threw away most of the contents of the underlying source (a novel by John Buchan that had been a best-seller then and which has remained a perennially popular read ever since) -- he later followed this practice in his subsequent treatments of Josephine Tey's A Shilling For Candles (as Young and Innocent), Ethel Lina White's The Wheel Spins (as The Lady Vanishes), and Francis Beeding's The House of Dr. Edwardes (as Spellbound), among other literary properties. In the process, he struck a blow for the director as a creative voice in his own right, independent of and superior to the novelist (at least where actual screen adaptations were concerned), who might take one or two good ideas, a name or two, and perhaps a setting and a scene from a chapter and junk everything else, making it his own. In a time when producers and studios still occupied a place of cultural inferiority (even in their own minds) to the authors and publishers of the printed word, this was no small achievement, especially considering that it was done well and, thus, justified itself. So, in his own way, working within the thriller genre in The 39 Steps, Hitchcock helped open the way for virtually every major director who came after him. Bruce Eder

All Movie Guide

Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps firmly established the director's reputation beyond the boundaries of the British isles, but it did far more than that: it was also the film where Hitchcock's reach and grasp as a filmmaker began growing by leaps and bounds. He'd already made three excellent thrillers (The Lodger (1926), Blackmail (1929), and The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)) that had attracted considerable attention in America, but The 39 Steps, as a piece of screencraft, assembled all the best elements in those widely scattered successes (spread across eight years of his career) between two covers in a way that riveted audiences and industry observers. It played exactly the way that British movies weren't supposed to, lively and piercingly funny, rather than stodgy and dignified; it was almost as much a comedy as a thriller, which was something new in any country's cinema; and it was almost as much a battle of the sexes in the jousting of its two leads (Robert Donat, Madeleine Carroll) as it was a quest by the hero to prove his innocence of a murder charge; by the end of the movie, we want to see not only how Richard Hanney (Donat) proves his innocence but also how he and Pamela (Carroll) manage to stay together. Not coincidentally, The 39 Steps was also the first of his major films in which Hitchcock ripped up and threw away most of the contents of the underlying source (a novel by John Buchan that had been a best-seller then and which has remained a perennially popular read ever since) -- he later followed this practice in his subsequent treatments of Josephine Tey's A Shilling For Candles (as Young and Innocent), Ethel Lina White's The Wheel Spins (as The Lady Vanishes), and Francis Beeding's The House of Dr. Edwardes (as Spellbound), among other literary properties. In the process, he struck a blow for the director as a creative voice in his own right, independent of and superior to the novelist (at least where actual screen adaptations were concerned), who might take one or two good ideas, a name or two, and perhaps a setting and a scene from a chapter and junk everything else, making it his own. In a time when producers and studios still occupied a place of cultural inferiority (even in their own minds) to the authors and publishers of the printed word, this was no small achievement, especially considering that it was done well and, thus, justified itself. So, in his own way, working within the thriller genre in The 39 Steps, Hitchcock helped open the way for virtually every major director who came after him.

All Movie Guide - Bruce Eder