Sadly Over-hyped

Dreadfully Boring

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

It can be hard to separate out modern sensibilities and expectations from enjoying old films -in context- but if you consider '39 Steps' and 'Sabotage', this film is lacking.H. tries some cinematic tricks near the end that leaves the viewer more confused than informed, and relies on weak associations rather than direct narrative to conclude the plot. I think the charitable view here is that there are several experiments in this film that he later perfects, but are seen in their untested form.Unusually for H. this plot drags and stutters, rather than provides a continuous flow, which is why this film is destined to be enjoyed by H. historians and curiosity seekers more than people who love films and judge them by their own lights.

One yearns to look backwards, owing to the batch of bad films coming on the market now...backwards to a time when the childhood of talking films experimented with literature. Such is Hitchcock's 'Secret Agent'a not so riveting adaptation of Somerset Maugham's 'Secret Agent', the grand daddy of spy novels. Situated here during the Great War when Ottoman Turkey was on the wrong side, John Gielgud, Madelaine Carroll, Robert Young and Peter Lorre engage in the Grand Game to snag a German spy. The spy is easy to spot. And justice will out in the end: safeguard the British colonial hold on the Middle East in same British hands. The nuts and bolts of espionage is a far cry from James Bond, but not the stiff upper lip, the glib repartee and in the face of danger a sang froid the British are famous for. The rise of Nazi Germany put Europe on edge and ill at ease. Daladier pursued appeasement to avoid another world war. But fascist Germany, despite its supporters in England, didn't sit well nonetheless, with its growing appetite for European real estate. Lorre looks as though he escaped from a gypsy encampment, with a gold ring in his right ear. Swarthy, curly hair and an odd sounding English sing song. If murder be, it's not the urbane Gielgud or the beautiful Carroll who will do it, but the stereotype of a 'dagoe who is the General, a skirt chasing Italian. The team of Gielgud, Carroll and Lorre murder the wrong German. Hitchcock has a gripping scene of the wrong man's wife is giving a German lesson to Carroll joined by the manicured Young who is pursuing her. The woman's dog keeps sniffing at the door with an insistence that announces a tragedy, for the messenger of death is at the door. The scene is fraught with tension, and reveals a Hitchcock we come to know. The villain is Marvin played by Young. A chase the formulaic chase that announces the film's conclusion as Young is pursued before he can reach neutral territory and put him out of harm's way. London, 'R' head of the secret service, sends in the air force to stop Marvin. Marvin dies, but not before he kills the General. England is saved. Imperial real estate in the Middle East kept within the colonial fold. Long shots, close ups, the ABCs of Hitchcock's filmography is all there. With all its drawing room sophistication, the film creaks.

It is hard to assign this inter-war Hitchcock thriller to any one genre... it is clearly a spy thriller but there are also romantic elements and a good number of comic moments.John Gielgud plays writer Edgar Brodie who returns from service in France in 1916 to learn that he has died while on leave! This is all part of establishing his new cover as Richard Ashenden; he is to go to neutral Switzerland with a man known as 'The General' to identify and eliminate a German agent before he can get to Constantinople. When Ashenden gets to Switzerland he is surprised to hear that his 'wife' Elsa has got there ahead of him; when he goes up to his room he finds a beautiful blonde wearing nothing but a towel and an American by the name of Robert Martin. It turns out that his boss, known as 'R', had sent her to improve his cover; he isn't impressed at first though as he sees her as a thrill seeker who doesn't really know how deadly their mission might be. They both learn when Ashenden and The General find their contact dead; the only clue to the killer is a button the dead man is clenching. That night at the casino Ashenden accidentally drops the button onto the roulette table. There is a bit of a laugh when it lands on the winning number then another player says he things it must be his... he is an Englishman married to a German woman; as he is undoubtedly the spy Ashenden and The General work up a plan to dispatch him. When the job is done Elsa no longer feels what they are doing is exciting and glamorous; it is grubby work... and it seems even grubbier when they learn that they got the wrong man! I lead puts them in the right direction but by then their target is on the move; heading to Constantinople which is in enemy territory.This Hitchcock film may be over seventy five years old but it doesn't feel particularly dated because it has a decent plot that has a few nice twists without being so convoluted it is hard to follow. The cast did a good job with a young John Gielgud putting in a sold performance as Ashenden; Madeleine Carroll was delightful as his 'wife' Elsa... I certainly won't forget her introductory scene and Peter Lorre was particularly entertaining as this lecherous, slightly creepy 'foreign gentleman'; The General. As one would expect from Hitchcock it was shot in a way that captured the tension of the situation... if you are a fan of Hitchcock's other works or just want to see a thriller that doesn't involve any offensive material then this is well worth watching.

Hitchcock was an extremely visual film-maker as a rule and this film took an entirely different direction. What I remember most are the sounds - or more specifically, the noises. The discordant sound of the organ, for example, stands out. It isn't pretty and why should it be? The organist's dead after all. The noise in the chocolate factory is a continuous din relieved only by a fire alarm! Then, two of the main characters are caught in the bell-tower of a church when the bells begin to ring. Again, the sound isn't pleasant at all but quite annoying. A "musical" scene with yodelers ends up with coins being swirled around plates and is almost overbearing. The dog's howling in its psychic moment is long and unnerving. In all, these sound effects set the audience on edge which I think was part of the original plan. The two central characters are uneasy with their task and we are made to suffer too. This is an unusual film for Hitch and well worth the time.Curtis Stotlar