1935 Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Richard Hannay stumbles upon a conspiracy that thrusts him into a hectic chase across the Scottish moors—a chase in which he is both the pursuer and the pursued—as well as into an unexpected romance with the cool Pamela.
Robert Donat Madeleine Carroll Lucie Mannheim Godfrey Tearle Peggy Ashcroft John Laurie Helen Haye Frank Cellier Wylie Watson Gus McNaughton Jerry Verno Peggy Simpson Matthew Boulton Pat Hagate Alfred Hitchcock Carleton Hobbs Elizabeth Inglis Quinton McPherson Frederick Piper Hilda Trevelyan Ivor Barnard Ex-Det. Sergt. Bishop Wallace Bosco Vida Hope James Knight Miles Malleson John Rae John Turnbull S. J. Warmington Show All…
Il Club dei Trentanove, I trentanove scalini, Les 39 marches, I 39 scalini, 39 escalones, L'homme au doigt coupé, Os 39 Degraus, 39 Degraus, 39 Stufen, The Thirty-Nine Steps, Тридцять дев'ять сходинок
Thrillers and murder mysteries High speed and special ops spy, agent, intrigue, thriller or suspense mystery, murder, detective, murderer or crime film noir, femme fatale, 1940s, thriller or intriguing action, explosives, exciting, action-packed or villain cops, murder, thriller, detective or crime Show All…
Step 1: Turn on your typewriter
Step 2: Think of a really cool title for a movie
Step 3: Name your movie that title
Step 4: Write your script
Step 5: Make sure to give your characters lots of depth and cool names
Step 6: Finish the first draft of your script
Step 7: Take it to your friend to look over for edits
Step 8: Throw things at your friend when they say the movie is bad
Step 9: Realize your friend was right and apologize
Step 10: Arduous editing to make your shitty script good
Step 11: After months of hard work you finally have a good script
Step 12: Go to Alfred Hitchcock's house
Step 13: Sneak…
john buchan: so there’s this guy and he’s accused of a murder he didn’t commit so he’s on the run from the law.
hitchcock: go on.
john buchan: and he meets this girl on a train.
hitchcock: oh, i fucking love trains. what happens next?
john buchan: they end up handcuffed together.
hitchcock: holy shit.
john buchan: and then they go to a hotel, and there’s only one room...with one bed...
hitchcock: you sir are hired!
john buchan: but there’s also a man who’s missing half his pinky finger and a whole bunch of spy stuff, if you’d just let me explain.
hitchcock: none of that matters to me at all.
"beautiful, mysterious woman pursued by gunmen. sounds like a spy story."
Hitchcock's man-on-the-run thriller The 39 Steps is precursor to North by Northwest. One of the most entertaining Hitch movies, pretty much acts as a prototype for the rom-com thriller genre. Fun (quite British), perfectly paced thriller with smart twists & turns. Such playful chemistry between Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll.
“I used to wake up in the middle of the night screaming, thinking the police were after me. But one gets hardened.”
A near-perfect snapdoodle of creamy greys and point collars, the kind of film where the star looks better poaching a haddock than you’ll ever look in a lifetime of your best moments. Hitchcock here seems a vanguardist of modern surveillance delirium, of innermost paranoia gone public—cops at train stations, cops crawling the Highlands, cops, cops, cops (and a comic menace of an autogyro.) Filmmakers have ripped it off for 80 years, whether they know it or not, but they usually get the hymn’s words but not its music: the piss-taking of God and politics, the whirl of push-pulls…
If you’ve seen the same trope a hundred times across a hundred action movies, it’s likely that it it was first seen in “The 39 Steps.”
The quick cut between a scream and a train whistle.
Being handcuffed to a handsome stranger.
Play-kissing that same stranger to avoid detection from pursuers.
And, of course, The McGuffin.
The only excess baggage in the perpetual chase of the landmark breakthrough of an Alfred Hitchcock feature is an exotic brunette; quickly…. dispatched…. for a blonde. Natch.
If there is a moment to pick when the career of Hitchcock really careened into an unstoppable momentum, there’s no better choice than the arrival of “39 Steps.” All his tendencies here culminate into trademarks; eventually to…
it’s crazy to me just how noticeably strong the directing is. even an early hitchcock film does so much with its camera while given so little to work with.
The 39 Steps to watch this with my fiance:
1. Order the movie from the library
2. Pick up the movie
3. Tell my fiance I got a movie
4. Mention it's Hitchcock so she is more likely to say yes
5. Clarify that it's from the 30s but it's not a silent film
6. "Yes it's Hitchcock, no you won't get nightmares"
7. Put the blu-ray in
8. Get two glasses of red wine
9. Cuddle on the couch, ready to go
10. Hit play
11. Apparently she wasn't ready, pause so she can finish her text
12. Hit play
13. Pause after twenty minutes in, she has to go to the washroom
14. Hit play
15. Both are…
Criterion Collection Spine #56
Laid the foundation for all the spy thrillers that came after it.
"Beautiful, mysterious woman pursued by gunmen. Sounds like a spy story ... That's exactly what it is. Only I prefer the word agent better."
Since I don't remember much of 'North by Northwest' I am going to claim The 39 Steps as my first ever Alfred Hitchcock 'man on the run' movie. The film is clearly inspirational and I would not be surprised if they started with this template when they made Brian De Palma's 'Mission: Impossible'.
My attention did come in and out at times while watching it, but for the most part it delivers a solid package of mystery, chase scenes, and…
Alfred Hitchcock makes The 39 Steps positively flicker with possibilities, and it deserves acknowledgement as one of the crowning achievements in his filmography rather than just one of his most significant pre-Rebecca accomplishments. It’s unjust to dismiss the greatness of conception that flows through the movie which detects him deftly mixing elements of comedy and action to tremendous effect.
The film effectively is performed as a chain of captivating events as well as functioning as a general observance on him demonstrating his exceptional abilities and experimenting with techniques that would come to be hallmarks of his work. His performers would perhaps come to hold a higher status and the production values more remarkable, but this adaptation of the 1915 novel from John Buchan is tremendous.
Brilliantly applying the twists & turns to build up its suspense while also supporting the entire narrative with its clever use of wit in order to keep the whole journey a light-hearted affair, The 39 Steps is an earlier gem in the career of a filmmaker who later went on to become arguably the greatest director of all time.
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, this story follows a man in London who tries to help a counterespionage agent prevent the stealing of top secret information from an organisation of spies but when the agent is killed & he is framed for the murder, he goes on the run to expose the spy ring & prove his innocence in the process.
Packed with a tight…
