Dvd/150: SECRET AGENT (Alfred Hitchcock, 1936)

For SECRET AGENT, Hitchcock kept elements from THE 39 STEPS: espionage, mistaken identity, trains and star Madeleine Carroll but while STEPS is regarded a classic, SECRET AGENT has met with less favour but I find it great fun.

In 1916, writer Edgar Brodie is given a new identity by MI5 as 'Richard Ashenden' and is sent to Switzerland with fellow agent Elsa - posing as his wife - and The General, an eccentric, enigmatic assassin, to catch a German secret agent. 

While Elsa encourages the humourous advances of Robert Marvin, an American guest at their hotel Ashenden and the General suspect the spy is a seemingly benign Englishman.

The General kills him but to Ashenden and Elsa's horror they have targeted the wrong man.  Can they unmask the real spy?

Gielgud's austere performance sits oddly with the relaxed charm of Carroll, Robert Young, the magnificent Peter Lorre and a young Lilli Palmer.

 

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