anishAlfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps : Movie Review
July 18th 2011 16:37
When an innocent Canadian national called Richard Hannay agrees to hide a
British spy Annabella Smith little does he know that his visit to London will soon turn into a cross-country cat and mouse game in which he will have to run both for his life and his freedom.
Annabella Smith is murdered and predictably Richard Hannay becomes the prime suspect. Now he must travel across to Scotland and seek the help of a fellow spy in order to clear his name. But on the way must always keep his guards up because according to Smith he must be weary of of an enemy spy with one of his little finger missing who is trying to smuggle sensitive information out of the country acting on behalf of a dangerous spy network called The 39 Steps.
But in the shady world of high profile espionage and counter espionage networks nothing can be taken at face value and the inexperienced Hannay must choose his allies correctly or be back stabbed by his powerful and unrepentant enemies.
Review of The 39 Steps
Despite The 39 Steps being considered one of Hitchcock's best movies I doubt if it will be able to satiate the demands of the average and unbiased 21st century viewer who is accustomed to lots of hard-hitting action (and perhaps a couple of bedroom/night club scenes) all depicted in HD or 3-D with mind boggling special effects to boot.
For one thing, the Charlie Chaplin like filming quality of the movie (yes I know it was cutting-edge in 1935) gives a comic undertone to all save the gravest parts of the movie and this impedes the suspense factor which is critical in suspense thrillers.
Also, in this hi tech world of James Bond and Ethan Hunt the final revelation, ingenious as it is, has lost a major part of its sensationalism because the viewer will be hard put to truly appreciate the problem in the first place.
In my opinion a sound watch but nothing that will really grab the attention or flame the fascination of today's average movie watchers.
Annabella Smith is murdered and predictably Richard Hannay becomes the prime suspect. Now he must travel across to Scotland and seek the help of a fellow spy in order to clear his name. But on the way must always keep his guards up because according to Smith he must be weary of of an enemy spy with one of his little finger missing who is trying to smuggle sensitive information out of the country acting on behalf of a dangerous spy network called The 39 Steps.
But in the shady world of high profile espionage and counter espionage networks nothing can be taken at face value and the inexperienced Hannay must choose his allies correctly or be back stabbed by his powerful and unrepentant enemies.
Review of The 39 Steps
Despite The 39 Steps being considered one of Hitchcock's best movies I doubt if it will be able to satiate the demands of the average and unbiased 21st century viewer who is accustomed to lots of hard-hitting action (and perhaps a couple of bedroom/night club scenes) all depicted in HD or 3-D with mind boggling special effects to boot.
For one thing, the Charlie Chaplin like filming quality of the movie (yes I know it was cutting-edge in 1935) gives a comic undertone to all save the gravest parts of the movie and this impedes the suspense factor which is critical in suspense thrillers.
Also, in this hi tech world of James Bond and Ethan Hunt the final revelation, ingenious as it is, has lost a major part of its sensationalism because the viewer will be hard put to truly appreciate the problem in the first place.
In my opinion a sound watch but nothing that will really grab the attention or flame the fascination of today's average movie watchers.
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