365+ movies in 365 Days: Day 164 - The 39 Steps

Alfred Hitchcock made more film masterpieces than any other director. In his fifty-five year career he made the following classic films; Rebecca, Shadow Of A Doubt. Notorious, Strangers On A Train, Rear Window, Dial M For Murder, To Catch A Thief, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Vertigo, North By Northwest, Psycho and The Birds. In addition to these 12 great films he made a multitude of very good movies; Frenzy, Marnie, Spellbound, Saboteur, Foreign Correspondent, Lifeboat and The Lady Vanishes, to name a few.

In his early works he developed a signature style of story telling through film. All the "Hitchcockian" touches came together for the first time in the film The 39 Steps. Here you can see such classic moments as the confrontation and climax in a large public venue, significant point of view shots, high angle shots and his famous juxtaposition shots, such as when the cleaning woman's scream turns into a train whistle.

The 39 Steps is the first film where Hitchcock delves deeply into subjects he would pursue for the rest of his career; the complex human quest for knowledge, abandonment of humans to foreboding landscapes, the falsely accused loner fighting for truth, theatre and it's relation to film, the nature of romance and the precariousness of human existence.

The plot is fairly basic. a young man meets a woman who reveals she is in danger. She gives him some information right before she is murdered. He is accused of the murder and must run to protect himself and somehow pass on the secret information that has been revealed to him. Hitchcock takes this storyline and hangs a film of true depth and emotion on it.

Hitchcock also introduced the concept of the "MacGuffin" Hitchcock described the MacGuffin as the thing in the plot that drives the story but is actually unimportant to the actual tale being told. In the case of The 39 Steps the MacGuffin is the 39 Steps. We never really know who or what it is until the end of the film, and it turns out to be unimportant to the central plot of the "man on the run" story

To begin to understand the film as art you should begin with Hitchcock. And the beginning of Hitchcock's great works starts with The 39 Steps.









At The Movie House rating **** stars

Other Films of Interest:
The Wrong man
Saboteur
North By Northwest
Three Days Of the Condor
Marathon Man
The Fugitive

note: I watched this on the newly restored Criterion series DVD. This film is in public domain and there are many bad copies out there. I highly recommend watching the restored version if you can.