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.

 

Shelf or charity shop?  Shelf

Dvd/150: THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (Alfred Hitchcock, 1934)

Hitchcock's 1950s remake might be better known but his original version is a more rewarding experience.  Cracking along at 75 minutes, it's packed with elegantly easy charm from the principals, eye-catching supporting roles and suspense and sly humour mixed with the lightest touch.

 

A husband and wife become enmeshed on their holiday in a plot to kill a foreign leader by a gang of assassins who kidnap their daughter.  Back in London, they discover she is being held in a church hall in Wapping.

 

Leslie Banks, Edna Best and Nova Pilbeam are all fine as the family with Banks almost being a dry run for Robert Donat in the THE 39 STEPS the following year.

Dominating the film however is Peter Lorre as the gang leader.  What is remarkable is that his English was so poor (he had fled Nazi Germany only the year before) that he learned his lines phonetically.

 

Shelf or charity shop?  Deffo Shelf!