Welcome back to the Great Alfred Hitchcock rewatch! Last time we watched Hitchcock's first American movies, and now we're going back to England to see what he was up to that made Hollywood come a knockin'.
Previous Installments
Here are today's batch of movies, and as usual we will be talking about them in the order that I saw them, which is reverse order.
Secret Agent (1936)
Sabotage (1936)
Young and Innocent (1937)
The Lady Vanishes (1938)
Jamaica Inn (1939)
Before we dive in, there is a confusing title situation that we need to talk through.
- Saboteur and Sabotage are two different movies. Saboteur is a 1942 movie about the manhunt for an individual who commits a sabotage act in an airplane factory. Sabotage is a 1936 movie about a sabotage incident in London.
- Sabotage is based on a book called The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad.
- The movie Secret Agent has no relation to the above mentioned The Secret Agent book. It is based on a group of short stories known as the Ashenden series by Somerset Maugham.
I get the feeling that explaining this situation doesn't make the titles any less confusing, but at least I tried.
So what is different about Hitchcock's British movies compared to the American ones? Well, the biggest difference is the budget. You can see where money was not spent in all of these movies. Hitchcock was very experienced at using miniatures for things like the pirate ship wrecks in Jamaica Inn and trains in The Lady Vanishes and Young and Innocent. The offset is that there was less interference from the front office, so these movies have an even more unique voice than we've seen before. Another way to say it is that each of these movies has something a little clunky about it, but also something unique and precious. For anyone new to Hitchcock, I would still steer you toward the later masterpieces like Rear Window or North by Northwest, but for the more experienced Hitchcock viewer, you will not be disappointed if you decide to check these movies out.
Another difference? Instead of having to track down library DVDs most of these movies are available on Kanopy and Hoopla. Young and Innocent was the only movie that I had to go the old school route to see.
Spoiler rating for this post: quite low, with the exception of Sabotage. I put up the 🚨🚨🚨 to talk about a fairly well known plot point. I do want to talk more about the ending, but I'm going to save it for when we get to Blackmail, since the endings are very similar.
Jamaica Inn (1939)
General plot summary and trivia
The movie opens on the coast of Cornwall in 1815 where shipwrecks are very common, partly because of the rocky coastline but mostly because there is a gang of pirates who are causing the wrecks. The movie starts with the pirates sinking their latest ship. The leader of the group reminds everyone of the most important rule of the gang: leave no survivors. The gang cheerfully follows orders.
Meanwhile, a stagecoach is making its way along the road, and a beautiful young Irish woman, Mary Yellen, asks to be dropped off at a place called the Jamaica Inn. The coachmen and the other passengers gasp and say there is no way they are stopping there. They drop Mary off at the next possible place, which is in front of a mansion in the middle of nowhere, and tell her good luck with that.
Having nowhere else to go, Mary knocks on the door and learns that the mansion belongs to Sir Humphrey Pengallan, who is the everything of the area: the richest man and the head of all law and order. He is in the middle of a lavish dinner party, but is very happy to interrupt the meal for an unexpected visit from a beautiful young woman. He has a very Gordon Gekko "greed is good" vibe, but he seems safe-ish for Mary to hang around. He offers to take her to Jamaica Inn.
When they get there, we learn that Mary's aunt and her husband own the inn, and that Mary's mother has recently died, so she is there because she has no family in Ireland anymore. She sent a letter to her aunt, but it had not arrived, so they had no idea she was coming. Jamaica Inn is super creepy, but the aunt takes Mary in.
Then the pieces start coming together: Jamaica Inn is the HQ of the pirates, who are led by Mary's uncle, however he is only the figurehead and not the real boss. That honor belongs to Mr. Law and Order himself, Sir Humphrey.
The plot thickens. Mary isn't the kinda gal to be cool with pirating, especially not the "take no prisoners" kind, so how long will it be before she figures out what is going on and what will happen once everyone knows that she knows?
Let's take a look:
Jamaica Inn was Hitchcock's final British movie before going Hollywood, and by the time it was finished he was ready to leave. The film was produced by actor Charles Laughton, who was on a mission to make it The Charles Laughton Show, and working conditions were difficult.
What I think of the movie
- Before: Good memories
- After: Like it, very close to a love
Jamaica Inn takes just a minute to warm up, but once Mary appears on the scene the story starts moving. It's a wild adventure that keeps us guessing what is going to happen next, and we have clear good guys to root for and a [very] bad guy to boo.
My only criticism of the movie besides a bit of a slow start is something that you can see plainly in the trailer that I linked. Oof Charles Laughton's makeup is bad. That's the downside of being a big star: once you reach a certain level it's not worth it for people to tell you when you have a bad idea.
Is there a MacGuffin? Jamaica Inn is the MacGuffin.
Does anyone get handcuffed in the movie? No
Is there a Wrong Man theme? No
Is it set in/filmed in the Bay Area? No
Does a character have Mommy Issues? No
Are there elements of the movie that are similar to other Hitchcock movies? Not that I can think of.
Actors of note, left handed actors, and actors that were frequent Hitchcock fliers:
- Maureen O'Hara as Mary, in her first movie. She is so good that it almost doesn't matter what the movie is about, I'd still be rooting for her and telling you to watch this movie. She young, she's beautiful, and she has brains.
- Charles Laughton as Sir Humphrey. We also saw him in The Paradine Case. Laughton was a huuuuge star. His next move after this movie was to head off to Hollywood with O'Hara and to make a little flick you might have heard of called The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
- Lesley Banks as the innkeeper/head of the pirate gang. We'll be seeing him again.
- The movie is based on the novel of the same name by our friend Daphne du Maurier! This was her first of three pairings with Hitchcock. I read the book at some point, and although I don't remember it, I think that it was good.
Is this movie OK to show to middle school aged kids? No issues with content, but the older these movies are getting I think that it's less likely that you'll find a young 'un willing to sit through them.
Rate the Hitchcock cameo! Whoa whoa whoa! We're not in Hollywood anymore, so we don't always get cameos. Jamaica Inn was the last movie not to have a Hitchcock cameo.
The Lady Vanishes (1938)
General plot summary and trivia
We are in a fictitious European country at a ski resort. As the movie opens, we get to know our cast of characters: Charters and Caldicott are two British gentlemen desperate to get back to England to attend a cricket match, Miss Froy is a sweet old lady, Gilbert is a brash young composer, and Iris is a beautiful young woman who is having one last girls' trip before returning home to get married in order to make her father happy.
Iris, Gilbert, and Miss Froy have an interaction at the hotel that results in a friendship between Iris and Miss Froy and a frenemyship between Iris and Gilbert. The next day, the entire cast gets on a train that will take them back to England. However, we begin to see that there is a lot more to Miss Froy than being a sweet old lady. The night before they leave, she intently listens to a song being sung by a street player and memorizes it, right before someone silently kills the musician. The next day at the station, someone tries to drop a large object on her, but Iris steps in at the last minute and ends up taking a non-fatal knock on the head. Everyone thinks that it's an accident, but the audience knows differently.
The train departs the station and Iris and Miss Froy have a nice time hanging out before Iris is overcome by wooziness from the bonk on the head. She takes a nap, and when she wakes up, Miss Froy is gone. Where is she? Well, all of the other passengers say that there is no such person and eagerly remind Iris that she just took a blow to the head, so she should feel completely normal about having vivid memories of someone who never existed.
Iris knows that something is wrong, but she is one person against many. That is, she is one person until Gilbert decides to ditch the enemy part of the frenemyship and team up with her to find out what is going on.
Let's take a look!
What I think of the movie
- Before: Meh
- After: Like it, very close to a love
I must have been in a mood the last time that I saw The Lady Vanishes. In my defense, the opening shots are very jenky, and there is a pervasive sense of English people being snotty because they are the superior country. This is a movie where you need to wait out the first ten minutes to be able to enjoy the goods.
After that, the story is lovely. We have two strong female characters, a very charming leading man, a mix of suspense and funny stuff, and OMG the ending!!! The ending tho!!!
Is there a MacGuffin? No
Does anyone get handcuffed in the movie? No
Is there a Wrong Man theme? No
Is it set in/filmed in the Bay Area? No
Does a character have Mommy Issues? No
Are there elements of the movie that are similar to other Hitchcock movies? Yes! The disappearing companion was used again in Foreign Correspondent.
Actors of note, left handed actors, and actors that were frequent Hitchcock fliers:
- Michael Redgrave is Gilbert. You know him as Vanessa and Lynn Redgraves' dad, and Natasha Redgrave's granddad.
- Dame May Witty is Miss Froy. We last saw her as the mom in Suspicion.
- The characters Charters and Caldicott were so popular that they were brought back in a few more (non-Hitchcock) movies for comic relief.
Is this movie OK to show to middle school aged kids? Yes, if they can get past the first 10-20 minutes.
Rate the Hitchcock cameo! It's OK. He's a passenger in a train station toward the end of the movie.
Young and Innocent (1937)
General plot summary and trivia
TL;DR: She is young, he is innocent. The End.
The story opens with an argument between a beautiful woman and a not-good looking man. We learn that they are married, but she left a long time ago and built a career as a movie star. She wants a divorce, but he won't give her one (which was a thing back then, especially in England). As the argument heats up, we observe that the man has a severe facial tic.
The next day Robert, a very good looking man, is walking along the beach when he sees a body floating in the waves. It is the woman from last night, and he knows who she is. He runs off to get help, and in the meantime two other witnesses come along and see a dead woman and a man running away. Robert becomes suspect numero uno in a heartbeat.
The police arrest Robert and interrogate him overnight in their small town police station. In the morning he faints from exhaustion at the same moment that Erica, who is an "of consenting age" teenager and the daughter of the police chief, comes in (it's a small town police station, so things are a little informal). She's a Girl Scout, and she uses her scouting skills to revive Robert. She makes the immediate assessment that he doesn't look like a killer.
Robert is due in court, and talks to a lawyer who he can tell is not going to break a sweat to get him off. Realizing that he is in a better position to find the killer than the police are, he escapes and of course meets up with Erica and they go on the run together. Their adventures lead them to a witness who saw a man with a tic and a possible last known location. Can they find the needle in the haystack before the police find them?
What I think of the movie
- Before: Good memories
- After: Like it
Young and Innocent is the classic wrong man on the run tale. It's a bit of a simple story, and all material that was covered previously and would be covered again, but that doesn't make it any less enjoyable. The standout of this one is Erica. I don't want to jinx anything, but for the third movie in a row we have a strong female character. She is young, but wiser than everyone around her, and her Girl Scout training has her able to keep her old beater of a car running and to provide first aid to her companions as needed.
There is an excellent scene toward the end of the movie where the protagonists are looking for the killer, the police are looking for the protagonists, and the killer sees both parties and comes to the wrong conclusion.
Is there a MacGuffin? No
Does anyone get handcuffed in the movie? No
Is there a Wrong Man theme? Yes
Is it set in/filmed in the Bay Area? No
Does a character have Mommy Issues? No
Are there elements of the movie that are similar to other Hitchcock movies? Yep! We're back in "I'm a nice guy that everyone thinks is a killer and I have to go on the run to prove my innocence" territory.
Actors of note, left handed actors, and actors that were frequent Hitchcock fliers:
- Nova Pilbeam is Erica. We'll be seeing her again.
- Percy Marmont is Erica's dad. He was a big ol' heartthrob in his younger days, and not at all unpleasant to look at here in his silver fox era. We'll be seeing him again!
Is this movie OK to show to middle school aged kids? There is no reason why not, except that the older these movies get the tougher a sell they're going to be to the young 'uns. Content warning for blackface.
Rate the Hitchcock cameo! Like it. He's an onlooker in the crowd as Robert escapes from the police station.
Sabotage (1936)
General plot summary and trivia
The movie opens in London at night. We see darkness and a city full of lights, and then we get some shots of a power plant and a lightbulb, and suddenly the city goes dark. We see a creepy looking man leave the power plant.
Investigators find a sand like substance in one of the power machines, and give the verdict of sabotage. In the meantime, the creepy man goes home, which is an apartment in the back of a movie theater, and washes his hands, leaving a sink full of gritty sand.
The creepy guy is Karl Verloc, and he and his wife, referred to in the movie as Mrs. Verloc, own the movie theater. While he's hiding in the apartment his wife is stuck in the box office in the dark with a mob of angry movie goers who want their money back since they can't show the movie without power. There is a grocery next door, and a very good looking man named Ted is employed there. Ted flirts with Mrs. Verloc, who is a young and beautiful woman. He observes that he just saw Karl come in, but Karl says that Ted is mistaken and that he (Karl) has been at home for the entire evening. In the meantime the power comes back on.
The next day we learn more about our cast of characters. Ted is not just a pretty face, he is an undercover detective who has been watching the Verlocs for a while. The household is Karl, Mrs. Verloc, and her young brother Stevie. The audience has observed that there is something off about the marriage, and we learn that Mrs. Verloc is in it because Karl provides support for Stevie, which was much more critical in the depression/pre-welfare era.
Karl goes off to meet his like minded friends, who tell him that the blackout didn't achieve very much so they want him to be a part of an explosion planned for the next week. Karl doesn't want to be involved with anything that's going to kill people, but he eventually decides to go along with the plan. However, he can't deliver the bomb himself so he needs someone who will not be suspected to do it...how about that kid brother? I mean, the wife is never going to find out.
Let's take a look:
What I think of the movie
- Before: Don't remember it, but I think it was good
- After: it's good! For the purposes of this project, it's a like.
Sabotage is a good looking movie full of suspense and heart. The friendship between Ted and Stevie and the it's-there-no-matter-how-much-they-try-to-deny-it budding attraction between Ted and Mrs. Verloc give the movie a very human, heartfelt edge. The story goes to a dark place, which Hitchcock later said that he regretted. It's fairly well known scene, but let's throw up the 🚨🚨🚨 to talk about it.
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The thing that Hitchcock later said that he regretted about Sabotage is that he took the bomb scene too far. Karl sends little Stevie out to deliver the bomb, which is set to go off at 1:45. Stevie gets delayed and is on a bus, sitting next to a woman with a puppy, when the bomb explodes and kills everyone. I'm on the fence about this: I think it's important to show that bombs kill people, including people that we care about, and without Stevie's death there is no reason for Mrs. Verloc to turn against Karl. But yeah, maybe it was a touch too far.
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My only other comment about the movie is that reading the wikipedia description of the book is eye opening. They had to change a lot of stuff! As often happened when movies needed to change book stuff for censorship reasons, there are a lot of of smaller plot points that don't make a lot of sense. There was also a plot point that a 1936 movie wasn't prepared to deal with: in the book Mrs. Verloc is very protective of Stevie because he has an autism-like condition. This is much more convincing than the movie's "oh I'm married to this guy who's kinda creepy because otherwise my young healthy brother would have no way to eat."
Toward the end there is a death that is a murder in the book, but it is committed by a character that we like, so what happens in the movie is very ambiguous. We can't quite tell if the death is a murder, an accident, or a suicide.
Is there a MacGuffin? The spy gang is the MacGuffin. The movie has nothing to do with their plot and everything to do with the Verloc marriage.
Does anyone get handcuffed in the movie? No
Is there a Wrong Man theme? No
Is it set in/filmed in the Bay Area? No
Does a character have Mommy Issues? No
Are there elements of the movie that are similar to other Hitchcock movies? Ooh the ending has a lot in common with Blackmail. I'll say more about this when we get there.
Actors of note, left handed actors, and actors that were frequent Hitchcock fliers:
- Sylvia Sidney is Mrs. Verloc. She was a very popular American actress at the time, and had a long career in movies that lasted until the 1990s. An example of one of her later movies that you might have seen is Beetlejuice. The British film industry liked to recruit stars from America from time to time to pump up British movies.
- We have an award for the most surprising name we've seen yet in a Hitchcock movie: Walt Disney! A Disney cartoon is being shown in the Verloc's movie theater.
Is this movie OK to show to middle school aged kids? Eh, check out the spoiler section before you make that call.
Rate the Hitchcock cameo! Like it! He walks in front of the movie theatre just after the lights come back on and looks up at the streetlights.
Secret Agent (1936)
General plot summary and trivia
It is London, 1916, and a bunch of soldiers drop in to pay their respects at the wake of a British army officer named Edgar Brodie. He wasn't killed in action, he went home on leave and died of a mysterious illness. It's a very stuffy dude scene, but this isn't our first Hitchcock movie so we know that something is up. Sure enough, as soon as everyone leaves, Brodie's servant starts cleaning up, and his first move it to take the lid of the coffin to show that it's empty.
We cut to Brodie arriving at an intelligence office, very surprised to see the story of his death in the newspaper. He is told that he is now on the secret service, and he is to assume the identity of Richard Ashenden and go to Switzerland to take out a very dangerous German agent. It's a big job for one person, so he is assigned a buddy for the job, an eccentric Mexican who goes by the name The General.
Ashenden and the General arrive in Switzerland and check into their hotel, where they are told that Mrs. Ashenden is waiting for them, which was news to them. Mrs. Ashenden, or Elsa as we come to know her, is a beautiful blonde who is new at the spy game and has struck up a flirtation with a man named Marvin. The four of them hang out while Ashenden and the General try to figure out who their target is. An older British man with a German wife fits the bill of prime suspect. Cool, mission accomplished. Or is it? As a character would say much later in North by Northwest, "war is hell".
Let's take a look! Please disregard the horrible pronunciation of the lead actor's name. I get that you don't encounter the name John Gielgud every day but c'mon he was not a nobody. It's "geel-good" and not "guile-good".
What I think of the movie
- Before: Don't remember it, no opinion
- After: ooh this is tough. Secret Agent has some unforgettable moments and it's stayed with me for a while. But it's also a little clunky. Let's call it a like with a touch of meh.
Bad things to say about Secret Agent: the picture and the soundtrack of the movie are not in great shape, which is a hazard of the old movie game - old movies did not look old when they were made, it's the result of the aging process of physical media. The deterioration of the sound track makes it hard to hear the dialogue sometimes. The story takes a while to warm up, and there are a few leaps of logic (why was it necessary to fake Brodie's death for him to be a spy? Why no advance notice about Elsa? yada yada yada).
Good things to say about Secret Agent: the story is still very much with me a week later. There are a ton of Hitchcock trademarks.
Stupendous things to say about Secret Agent: there is a scene in a bathroom where a roll of toilet paper and a toilet are on prominent display! You can kind of see them in the background in the video that I linked in a scene with Peter Lorre. Psycho is often credited as the first movie to show a toilet, which we already knew wasn't exactly true but now we know that it wasn't even the first toilet in a Hitchcock movie.
Is there a MacGuffin? Yes, it's the usual MacGuffin for the spy movies - the story has nothing to do with the spies.
Does anyone get handcuffed in the movie? No
Is there a Wrong Man theme? Not in the classic Hitchcock sense, but an error of judgement is made and the phrase "the wrong man" is used several times afterwards.
Is it set in/filmed in the Bay Area? No
Does a character have Mommy Issues? No
Are there elements of the movie that are similar to other Hitchcock movies? YESSSSSS!!!!! Someone is murdered, and the victim is holding something that belonged to the killer in his hand. This was brilliantly revisited in Frenzy, which was Hitchcock's second to last movie, where the killer realizes that a murder victim has something that belongs to him in her hand, and he has to go back to the body and remove it, which is easier said than done. I can't tell you how happy this makes me.
Actors of note, left handed actors, and actors that were frequent Hitchcock fliers:
- John Gieldgud is Brodie/Ashenden. He was working in movies up to the late 90s, so you've probably seen him on the back end of his career.
- Madeleine Carroll is Elsa, and she is lovely. If you're going to rank the Hitchcock leading ladies by beauty, the number one spot goes to Grace Kelly and Madeleine has a lock on number two. We'll be seeing her again in The 39 Steps.
- Peter Lorre is the General. This is not the last time that we will be seeing him in our Hitchcock journey, and he had a remarkable career as a character actor. If you've seen The Maltese Falcon or Casablanca, you've seen him before.
- Robert Young a.k.a. Marcus Welby, M.D. is the guy that Elsa has a flirtation going on with. He was an American actor, and it is the same situation with Sylvia Sidney in Sabotage - we're adding a Hollywood name to the cast to try to get more folks in to see the movie.
- Former heartthrob/current Silver Fox Extraordinaire Percy Marmont in an unforgettable role. We are still not done with him in our Hitchcock journey.
Is this movie OK to show to middle school aged kids? No issues with content, but it is extremely unlikely that any kid would make it through the dull beginning and the creaky old movie feel in the early scenes.
Rate the Hitchcock cameo! Nope! There is none.
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Whoop whoop, thanks for hanging out with me for another round of Hitchcock movies! Have you seen any of these besides The Lady Vanishes????
What's coming up next? More England, more 1930's. See you next time to chat about:
Rich and Strange (1931)
Number Seventeen (1932)
Waltzes from Vienna (1934)
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)
The 39 Steps (1935)
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