The 39 Steps [Criterion Collection] [Blu-ray]

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Overview

In this classic Hitchcock spy thriller, an innocent man becomes a murder suspect and is pursued by police and enemy agents. While handcuffed to an icy blonde, he searches for the real killer and tries to unravel a web of intrigue involving military secrets and the mysterious 39 Steps organization.

Product Details

Release Date:	06/26/2012
UPC:	0715515096317
Original Release:	1935
Source:	Criterion
Region Code:	A
Presentation:	[B&W]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Mono]
Language:	English
Time:	1:26:00
Sales rank:	9,013

Special Features

Audio commentary by Alfred Hitchcock scholar Marian Keane; Hitchcock: the early years (2000), a British documentary covering the director's prewar career; Original footage from British braodcaster Mike Scott's 1966 television interview with Hitchcock; Complete broadcast of the 1937 Lux Radio Theatre adaptation, starring Ida Lupino and Robert Montgomery; New visual essay by Hitchock scholar Leonard Leff; Audio experts form Fran?ois Truffaut's 1962 interviews with Hitchcock; Original production design drawings; Plus: a booklet featuring an essay by film critic David Cairns

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Robert Donat	Richard Hannay
Madeleine Carroll	Pamela
Godfrey Tearle	Prof. Jordan
Lucie Mannheim	Smith
Peggy Ashcroft	Margaret
John Laurie	John
Helen Haye	Mrs. Jordan
Wylie Watson	Memory
Frank Cellier	Watson
Peggy Simpson	Young Maid
Gus McNaughton	Voyager
Jerry Verno	Voyager
Miles Malleson	Director of the Palladium
Ivor Barnard	Political Meeting Chairman
Wallace Bosco	Palladium Doorman
Matthew Boulton	Fake Police Officer
Carleton Hobbs	Fake Policeman #2
Vida Hope	Usherette
Elizabeth Inglis	Pat, Professor Jordan's Daughter
Quinton McPherson	Clergyman on the Flying Scotsman
Frederick Piper	The Milkman
Hilda Trevelyan	Innkeeper's Wife
Marianne Stone	Actor
Jack Beaver	Composer
Louis Levy	Composer
Hubert Bath	Composer

Technical Credits

Alma Reville

Charles Bennett

Ian Hay

Alma Reville	Screenwriter
Charles Bennett	Screenwriter
Ian Hay	Screenwriter
Michael Balcon	Producer
Ivor Montagu	Producer
Jack Whitehead	Special Effects

Editorial Reviews

Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps firmly established the director's reputation beyond the boundaries of the British isles, but it did far more than that: it was also the film where Hitchcock's reach and grasp as a filmmaker began growing by leaps and bounds. He'd already made three excellent thrillers (The Lodger (1926), Blackmail (1929), and The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)) that had attracted considerable attention in America, but The 39 Steps, as a piece of screencraft, assembled all the best elements in those widely scattered successes (spread across eight years of his career) between two covers in a way that riveted audiences and industry observers. It played exactly the way that British movies weren't supposed to, lively and piercingly funny, rather than stodgy and dignified; it was almost as much a comedy as a thriller, which was something new in any country's cinema; and it was almost as much a battle of the sexes in the jousting of its two leads (Robert Donat, Madeleine Carroll) as it was a quest by the hero to prove his innocence of a murder charge; by the end of the movie, we want to see not only how Richard Hanney (Donat) proves his innocence but also how he and Pamela (Carroll) manage to stay together. Not coincidentally, The 39 Steps was also the first of his major films in which Hitchcock ripped up and threw away most of the contents of the underlying source (a novel by John Buchan that had been a best-seller then and which has remained a perennially popular read ever since) -- he later followed this practice in his subsequent treatments of Josephine Tey's A Shilling For Candles (as Young and Innocent), Ethel Lina White's The Wheel Spins (as The Lady Vanishes), and Francis Beeding's The House of Dr. Edwardes (as Spellbound), among other literary properties. In the process, he struck a blow for the director as a creative voice in his own right, independent of and superior to the novelist (at least where actual screen adaptations were concerned), who might take one or two good ideas, a name or two, and perhaps a setting and a scene from a chapter and junk everything else, making it his own. In a time when producers and studios still occupied a place of cultural inferiority (even in their own minds) to the authors and publishers of the printed word, this was no small achievement, especially considering that it was done well and, thus, justified itself. So, in his own way, working within the thriller genre in The 39 Steps, Hitchcock helped open the way for virtually every major director who came after him. Bruce Eder