The 39 Steps

Among Hitchcock's finest films, and certainly top among his British productions, The 39 Steps not only introduced elements to John Buchan's classic adventure story that would be reiterated in subsequent adaptations, it also consolidated many factors that would become staples in the director's later movies.

Most notable among these is the storyline built around an innocent but resourceful man getting caught up in a mystery and pursued - something that would be utilised in 1942's Saboteur and would reach its apogee in 1959's immortal North By Northwest.

The dapper gentleman in this case is played by the great British actor Robert Donat. The film is one of his most well-known, though he won an Oscar for Goodbye, Mr. Chips a few years later. Donat made only 20 films in his tragically short career, which was marred by severe asthma. (He would eventually die following an asthma attack in 1958, aged just 53.)

Here, as Canadian Richard Hannay, Donat is the archetypal Hitchcock hero - wry, independent sophisticate, tenaciously attacking obstacles without losing his debonair charm. And also flirting with the ladies with sublime confidence. The rapport here between Donat and his co-stars Lucie Mannheim and, particularly, Madeleine Carroll, is as sexy and funny as anything found in a Howard Hawks screwball comedy.

We first meet Hannay at a music hall show. Among the acts is one Mr Memory (Wylie Watson) who has the ability to remember a remarkable array of facts, something he demonstrates amid the ribaldry ("Who was the last British heavyweight champion of the world?" "Henry the Eighth!" "My old woman!").

The show is broken up when two shots ring out and in the crush that follows, Hannay is approached by a woman who asks "May I come home with you?" At Hannay's flat, she introduces herself as "Miss Annabella Smith" and starts to tell him about intrigues she has uncovered in her capacity as a freelance spy that concerns a "secret vital to your air defence." He's unconvinced - "You ever heard of a thing called 'persecution mania'?". When she asks "Have you ever heard of The 39 Steps?" He responds: "No, what's that? A pub?"

Hannay is more ready to believe her story when she stumbles into his bedroom that night, a knife sticking out of her back. He becomes still more convinced when he is marked as the primary suspect in her murder. He flees on the Flying Scotsman, but the police - and dubious enemy powers, frequently disguised as the authorities - are in pursuit.

They nearly get him too, when a woman on the train (Carroll) identifies Hannay. In a famous scene set on the Forth Bridge he eludes them and escapes to the Highlands. The manhunt continues, and he takes refuge with a crofter ('Dad's Army's' John Laurie) and his wife (Peggy Ashcroft). In the book, Hannay was of Scots descent and passed as a Scot while on the run, meeting several sympathetically portrayed figures. Here, Laurie's character is a dodgy stereotype - dour, suspicious, money-grubbing. It's one of the few dated missteps in the film.

Continuing his flight, Hannay reaches Professor Jordan (Godfrey Tearle), a man who's assumed to be an ally, but is in fact the enemy spies' leader. Jordan even attempts to shoot Hannay, but he's saved by a prayer book in his pocket, which he explains to the local sheriff (Frank Cellier), who he comes clean to.

When the sheriff tries to arrest him, Hannay flees once more and winds up having to make an impromptu political speech before getting captured by fake police and cuffed to the woman who identified him earlier. This is Pamela, the love-interest and one of the biggest changes to Buchan's book, which was very much a lone-male tale. Hitchcock was savvy in this addition: the device of having Hannay having to flee with Pamela gives the second half of the film a spot-on verve.

Movie lore has it that the pair had not met before shooting the scenes, and Hitchcock cuffed them together long before the cameras rolled to force them to get acquainted, even claiming to have lost the key. It's hard to believe this yarn entirely, but it's a nice story and would in part explain the freshness of their double-act; either that or they were just consummate actors enjoying their roles and the saucy scenario (including a scene in which she removes her stockings, his handcuffed hand grazing her leg).

Pamela refuses to believe Hannay, so he winds her up by telling her that he committed his first murder aged 19 and that he had a Cornish pirate for a great uncle. When she slips the cuffs and goes to leave, she overhears a conversation between the two henchmen who posed as the police and finally believes him. Now Hannay has an ally, but can he prove his innocence, expose the plot, and save Britain's secrets? Oh, and will we ever find out what the 39 steps are?

Hitchcock and his writer collaborators Charles Bennett (adaptation), Ian Hay (dialogue) and Alma Reville ('continuity', which in the 1930s was essentially a script job) totally overhauled Buchan's source material. They changed the hero's backstory, updated the 1914 setting, and the political mystery at the book's heart. They also altered the climax, introduced some sly humour and, of course, brought in the ladies. Despite this, the film is true to the spirit of the book.

Technically, The 39 Steps is wonderful, featuring some remarkable cinematography, stunts and special effects, such as the combining of location footage of Hannay and Pamela's flight across the moors with material shot on elaborate sets, one featuring an entire waterfall.

Hitchcock was notoriously averse to location shooting, particularly for important dialogue scenes, so much of the footage featuring actual moorland involved doubles, while the stars stayed in London, being directed on soundstages at Lime Grove Studios. All of which is blended into a successful whole. Hitchcock was certainly a master of the edit - look out for the great shot where we cut from a charlady's open-mouthed scream to the piercing whistle of the steam train emerging from a tunnel.

Although there is a lot of fun to be had in the 1959 version, The Thirty-Nine Steps (itself more a remake of Hitchcock's film than a fresh adaptation), and the 1978 version has its moments too, neither can compare to the 1935 film. In his 10 years as a director (and 17 previous features), Hitchcock honed his craft, developed many of the themes that would recur throughout his career, and proved sufficiently successful commercially to gain considerable control over his productions.

All of which is evident in the refinement of The 39 Steps - in its performances, its dialogue, its tight, suspenseful plotting, its stunts and its visual style. It's no wonder the film was a huge hit on its release, and became established as a classic - even being voted the fourth best British film ever in a 1999 BFI poll.