The 39 Steps (1935)
U.S.: Prime, Roku, Hoopla, Criterion
Canada: Prime, Hoopla, Criterion
by Walter Chaw
There is no single director who has inspired more scholarship than Alfred Hitchcock.
He made upwards of sixty films throughout his storied career, most of which survive. The first film considered to show the hallmarks of his work was his third completed feature, The Lodger, from 1926. Subtitled “A Story of the London Fog,” it told the tale of a Jack the Ripper-styled murderer who may or may not be the same mysterious lodger staying with an unassuming family. Twenty films later, The 39 Steps was seen by many as the pinnacle of pre-war British cinema, though I confess I prefer The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) and Young and Innocent (1937). That’s quibbling, however, as The 39 Steps is by every measure a masterpiece.
Sharing a “wrong man” theme that is a tentpole of Hitchcock’s work, The 39 Steps tells the story of a man who is mistaken for a murderer and a spy and must find the actual murderer and spy to exonerate himself. I introduced it as naughty and asked the kids to keep an eye out for some images and connotations and even flagrant comments that would distinguish this picture as one largely about sex. They were enthusiastic, as teenagers will be, certain as they were that since this is an eighty-four-year-old film, they weren’t about to see something that would be embarrassing for them to watch with their parents. They were in for a surprise.
I also asked them to watch closely for Hitchcock’s commentary on religion in the film. After, I hoped they would draw a line from it to the depictions of faith in The Night of the Hunter and Constantine.
- How does Hannay (Robert Donat) escape from his apartment at the beginning?
- What’s the first thing he tells the milkman?
- What’s the last thing the milkman says to him?
- Why is adultery the place where the two men find common ground where patriotism and murder could find no sympathy?
The sound of a train-whistle screaming through a tunnel accompanies the discovery of the body. Trains represent one thing in the British tradition (the spoiling of nature via the spread of industrialization) and another entirely in the American tradition (the promise of commerce and social interaction via the linking of remote settlements). I asked them to recall William Blake’s “The Tyger,” which we invoked last time around with Joe Versus the Volcano. Here it is again, for easy reference:
Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp,
Dare its deadly terrors clasp!
When the stars threw down their spears
And water’d heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
I had the poem in front of me and read the first stanza aloud. They remembered that the piece (through their analysis) was about the Industrial Revolution in Britain and how the Tyger is a steam engine bringing destruction to unspoilt Nature–that is, to God’s first testament. Hannay’s choice of flight is a train into Britan’s countryside–he is the emblem of spoilage in the form of technological sophistication. The creation of Man is an affront to the creations of God.
On the train, a pair of underwear salesmen interest a priest. This is the first salvo Hitch fires at the clergy and the hypocrisy of religion in this film.
How does the priest react to the bra?
As part of Hannay’s flight, he stumbles into the car of Pamela (Madeleine Carroll) and dons the second of his “disguises” (remember, the first is as a philanderer fleeing a jealous husband). He pretends to be Pamela’s lover and kisses her. In shock, she drops her glasses. Glasses are significant in Hitchcock–they represent knowledge and, in their twin lenses, the eye of the director. Broken glasses are meaningful for that reason: people wearing glasses are the bearers of knowledge. When someone loses their glasses, they have lost some measure of power.
How do we know Pamela is unhappy with what’s happening to her?
I didn’t go deep into the symbolism of glasses for Hitch, but I did have them articulate that eyeglasses were key. Why else this shot in isolation?
The 39 Steps is a good gateway for The Lady Vanishes, Strangers on a Train, and North by Northwest. This groundwork you’re laying around trains and glasses becomes vital foundational work for further analysis of the director’s vast and loaded portfolio.
Hannay lands in a farmhouse and flirts with the farmer’s wife. There follows a loaded exchange under the nose of the jealous husband, who is quick with scripture but light on grace and forgiveness. He’s a particular kind of religious person. (He’s a dick, is what I’m saying.)
- What are your impressions of the scene at the farmhouse?
- What did you think of the farmer?
- What did you think of his wife?
- How do we know there’s been a misunderstanding by the farmer–what does he believe?
- What is the use of religion for Hitchcock?
The farmer stands outside his window, looking in. It’s worth making some kind of comment on this scene to lay the groundwork for a future screening of Rear Window. My kids have seen many of the major Hitchcocks already, though they both somehow missed this one. They were better equipped to do an active reading of The 39 Steps than many their age might be without a similar background. Still, the picture is fleet enough to peanut-butter over any unfamiliarity.
Your kids might notice the noir lighting in the farmhouse sequence…
Mine have a background in noir after Out of the Past and Constantine.
- How is The 39 Steps a noir?
- How is it not?
My kids pointed out that this film is “pre-noir” in that it came out before what is generally considered the noir period in the United States. It was a good point.
- If this is pre-noir, where do this angle and that lighting come from?
- Are there other films you know that this might remind you of?
Alas, they didn’t get where I was leading them. I was hoping someone would say something about Tim Burton. Burton is not a noir director, of course (though, arguably, Ed Wood features some noir elements)–rather, he’s an Expressionist heavily influenced by directors who influenced Hitchcock, namely Fritz Lang and F.W. Murnau. A screening of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is coming in the next few weeks, and the roots of this exaggerated style, which evokes the interior lives of its protagonists, will be unearthed in detail.
For now, I praised them for that observation and planted the seed that even Hitchcock was not the originator of this sort of image on screen–that there was an entire school of cinema that took this level of artistry to unimaginable heights. I took pains, too, to mention that many of Hitch’s films have “happy” endings, making them “comedies” in the Greek sense, whereas most noirs are tragedies.
- How is the ending of The 39 Steps reassuring?
- How is it ambiguous?
There’s a chase across the moors:
- How are the cops being portrayed?
- How are the very wealthy portrayed?
- When does Pamela become an ally to Hannay? What does it take?
- What do the innkeepers believe about the fugitive couple?
There’s an exceptionally randy scene where our fugitive heroes, handcuffed together, try to get out of their soaked clothes. Hannay has Pamela take off her stockings. In so doing, there are a few moments of “accidental” groping and images like this one, which looks a lot like a pantomime of a vulva. Immediately following, as Hannay patiently saws away at the cuffs, Hitchcock shoots it all suggestively–the file and the cuffs just offscreen.
In 1935, you weren’t really allowed to show a couple in bed together. How did Hitchcock get around the censors?
It’s good to establish early on how Hitchcock was a master of circumventing the censors. He would write pages he never intended to shoot filled with such atrocity that the censors would overlook lesser transgressions. He would shoot minimal coverage so that the film could only be cut one way. He would hide and imply, deceive and cajole. There’s a lot more sex in Hitchcock than meets the eye. When we do Budd Boetticher’s 7 Men from Now, we’ll revisit this conversation about intimacy vs. sex. We’ll do it a different way with Billy Wilder, where the focus will veer towards how you can be blatantly filthy and get away with it.
- What is/are “The 39 Steps”?
- To whom does that matter?
- What is this film about?
- If the film is not about “The 39 Steps,” then what function does “The 39 Steps” serve?
This is where we touched on Hitchcock’s “MacGuffin” theory–the idea that there is something in his films the characters care a great deal about but that no one in the audience should care even a little about. Hitchcock’s movies proved vital for establishing the idea of subtext in critical theory, where the plot is straightforward yet the meaning is anything but. The pleasure should be in unravelling the meaning, not understanding the plot.
What we see in the background of Mr. Memory reciting the key to the whole plot speaks more to what the film is actually interested in: an endless line of chorus girls. And then there’s this final shot of holding hands (one of them in shackles, still).
- Whose hand is still in a handcuff?
- What does this say about marriage for Hitchcock?
- Who still has choice and power in the relationship?
- Who is the “hero” of this film?
What I most love about this film–especially for teens coming into their sexuality and approaching dating years–is the maturity of its message concerning adult relationships. In the end, we understand that it’s all about sex…until it’s not. Then it’s all about commitment, truth-telling, and maintaining an identity. There’s a time for frivolity and a time for responsibility–and at the end of it all, the woman here is not merely the equal of a man, she’s stronger and more consistently resilient than the man.
I mentioned that Hitchcock was one of the key figures whose work would be dissected at the beginning of film criticism as a serious academic discipline. Feminist theory, in particular, honed its edge on Hitch.
- How does this film treat women?
- How are women weak?
- How are they strong?
- How is Pamela portrayed?
- What are Hannay’s choices in the film?
- What are Pamela’s choices?
Next time, we consume a complex Buster Keaton trifle, Sherlock Jr..
