Alfred Hitchcock’s brisk chase thriller is a pleasure because Robert Donat makes charm look useful under pressure. The opening is stiff, but the pursuit and Madeleine Carroll’s resistance soon give it something better to do.
The 39 Steps is a nimble, funny thriller, with an opening that takes a little too long to get out of its own way. Alfred Hitchcock makes a pursuit by police and spies depend on the awkward business of persuading another person to believe an unlikely explanation. Richard Hannay needs help, and being personable is no guarantee of getting it. At 86 minutes, the film has room for suspicion, attraction and unexpected sadness without treating any of them as a diversion.
Robert Donat gives Hannay the easy manner of someone who expects a reasonable explanation to settle things. That assurance is funny under these circumstances, and the performance lets fear disturb it without throwing the character away. His changes from composure to alarm make the danger credible without stopping the comedy. They also keep us interested in how Hannay will manage the next encounter, even when the machinery of the spy story matters rather less.
Madeleine Carroll’s Pamela gives that charm some welcome resistance. She does not make suspicion look like stupidity, which is crucial when the film asks us to enjoy a romance built around mistrust. The handcuffs are a blunt device for keeping the pair together, but the friction between the performances does the useful work. Some of the romantic presumption has aged less well than the bickering; the film is rather confident about what Pamela ought to feel. By romantic-comedy standards, though, there is unusual pleasure in watching charm fail to produce immediate agreement.
Bernard Knowles’s cinematography serves the changing locations well, giving the pursuit clarity without making the surroundings merely functional. Each place feels sufficiently distinct to renew our interest in the escape, rather than supplying another stretch of ground to cross. Editor Derek N. Twist keeps those shifts brisk without making the people disposable. There is enough time to register an encounter before the pursuit demands another departure, and that balance makes the speed enjoyable.
The crofter’s cottage is where that attention to people pays off. We were moved by Peggy Ashcroft’s performance there; her warmth makes the interruption to the chase feel worth every moment. Alongside John Laurie as John the Crofter, she gives the episode a weight the larger conspiracy rarely needs. The pleasure of an escape thriller can become rather selfish, with everyone measured by how useful they are to the fugitive. Here the people Hannay encounters briefly matter in their own right.
The music credited to Louis Levy and Jack Beaver is effective without being the chief source of excitement. It supports the urgency, but the changes of tone in the acting and the timing of the editing leave the stronger impression. The opening is less sure-footed: the intrigue needs arranging before the film can settle into the encounters it handles so well. This is a small but noticeable drag in a thriller otherwise so good at moving on. We recommend it readily, with a little patience for the opening and rather less agreement with its assumptions about courtship.
