The Great Alfred Hitchcock Rewatch: Rich and Strange to The 39 Steps

Woo hoo and welcome to another installment of The Great Alfred Hitchcock Rewatch!!!  This time we're solidly in the 1930s.  When this batch of movies started Hitchcock was a director like any other director but by the time it was over he was a superstar.

Previous Installments

Intro Post

The Final Five Movies

The Wrong Man to The Birds

Dial M for Murder to The Man Who Knew Too Much

Rope to I Confess

Shadow of a Doubt to The Paradine Case

Rebecca to Saboteur

Secret Agent to Jamaica Inn

Here are today's batch of movies, and we'll be talking about them in the order that I saw them in, which is reverse order:

Rich and Strange (1931)
Number Seventeen (1932)
Waltzes from Vienna (1934)
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)
The 39 Steps (1935)

Spoiler rating for this post: low

The 39 Steps (1935)

General plot summary and trivia

The movie opens in a music hall and a performer named Mr. Memory takes the stage.  As his name implies, he has a photographic memory and he has memorized a ton of facts and figures.  His act is that the audience asks him all kinds of obscure trivia questions, and he answers.

A good looking man in the audience asks him what the distance is between Winnipeg and Montreal.  This is our cue that we've met the hero of our story, Richard Hannay, who is Canadian and staying in London for a few months for work.  Mr. Memory answers and the questions continue but the audience is getting rowdy and a fight breaks out.  Suddenly a gun is fired.  The crowd rushes out of the theater, and in the tangle Hannay finds that an attractive woman is clinging to him.  He helps her out onto the street, and she bluntly asks if she can go home with him.  He's an adventurous guy, so he steers her toward a bus.

When they get to Hannay's apartment, it becomes clear that the woman did not ask to go home with him because he's cute.  She tells him that her name is Smith, that she is a spy on the trail of the 39 Steps, that her next stop is a town in Scotland, and that there is a big bad guy out there who is missing his little finger.  At first Hannay thinks that she's crazy, but he does take note that there are two guys hanging out in the street watching the apartment.

Well, we've all seen North by Northwest so I bet you can guess what happens next...someone gets a knife in the back, Hannay goes on the run, there is a train, and there is a blonde.  Well, if ya gotta run anyway you might as well go to that town in Scotland and see if you meet anyone with nine fingers.

Let's take a look!

What I think of the movie

• Before: Love it
• After: Love it

I don't care how similar this movie is to North by Northwest and so many other Hitchcock movies: it's great, and it never gets old.  

So far all of Hitchcock's 1930s movies have taken a minute to warm up, but The 39 Steps doesn't have this problem.  We get our opening credits, and then we're right in the action.  It's true that everything in the movie screams "it's 1935" but there is a fresh feel to the action and nothing feels old.

Er, OK, nothing feels old except for about five seconds of the movie where Hannay is chased by a police helicopter.  Whoever normally did Hitchcock's miniature work must have taken the day off because it looks like something out of a 1910 movie, but it's only a few seconds so we'll let it go.

Who is cooler, Richard Hannay in The 39 Steps or Roger O. Thornhill in North by Northwest?  Well, no one is cooler than Cary Grant, but even he had to shave.  The action in The 39 Steps takes place over about five days, and Hannay maintains his pencil mustache without ever going near a razor.

Is there a MacGuffin? The 39 Steps are the MacGuffin

Does anyone get handcuffed in the movie?  Aw yiss!  This is the fun handcuffs movie.  Hannay and Pamela get handcuffed to each other and have to go on the run, making them very literally in it together.

Is there a Wrong Man theme? Yep

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?  Hoo boy are there ever!  Off the top of my head here are some moments in The 39 Steps that we've seen in other movies:

• An ordinary man who is minding his own business is accused of murder and/or gets swept up in something bigger than himself: Young and Innocent, Foreign Correspondent, Saboteur, NxNW
• A knife in the back: The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956 version), NxNW
• The hero takes refuge and/or is held against his will in an upscale home where bad guys are afoot.  A dinner party is taking place during this time, and the hostess knows what is going on but her main concern is making sure that the party is not interrupted: Saboteur, NxNW
• The hero is chased by a plane: NxNW....okay it is a bit of a stretch to make this connection, but Hannay does get chased by a very clunky looking police helicopter for a few seconds.
• The hero appears to get killed: Foreign Correspondent, NxNW
• The hero is handcuffed while on the run: Saboteur
• The hero has to give a nonsense speech in front of a crowd: Saboteur
• An escape by train: Spellbound, NxNW
• An unexpected meeting with a blonde in a train: Suspicion, NxNW
• The espionage secret has to be memorized: The Lady Vanishes, Torn Curtain
• Something that started in Number 17: a body is found by someone who screams, but we cut to something else that makes noise instead: we go from Hannay's landlady to a train whistle, and in Young and Innocent we go from two women to a flock of seagulls.

Actors of note, left handed actors, and actors that were frequent Hitchcock fliers: 

• Madeleine Carroll is Pamela.  We last saw her in Secret Agent.
• John Laurie is a cranky farmer who takes Hannay in for a night.  We'll be seeing him again in our Hitchcock journey, and he had a long career so you have very likely seen him elsewhere.
• According to IMDB, Sigourney Weaver's mom appears somewhere in the movie.

Is this movie OK to show to middle school aged kids? Yes if they are willing to sit through a movie that is this old.  IMO this one will have the highest success rate for younger audiences out of all of Hitchcock's pre 1940s offerings.

Rate the Hitchcock cameo!  Love it!  Toward the beginning when Hannay and Smith get on the bus he walks by and drops a piece of litter on the street.

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)

General plot summary and trivia

Bob and Jill Lawrence are hanging out in Switzerland with their tween daughter Betty.  We never find out if they have careers or if they're just rich, but the reason that they are there is because Jill is participating in a shooting competition.  Their friend Louis Bernard is also there and he is in a skiing competition.

Betty inadvertently ruins both Louis's and her mom's big moments - she chases after a dog which causes Louis to have to jump off the course, and she makes a noise that startles her mom and messes up her aim.  Having lost the match, Jill shakes hands with her opponent, Ramon, and says that she hopes they will get the chance to compete again someday (hello foreshadowing!).

That night everyone is at a dinner and dance.  Jill and Louis are dancing, and Bob and Betty take the opportunity to play a joke.  They take Jill's latest knitting project out of her bag and attach one end of the yarn to Louis's jacket, and as the dancers move, the yarn tangles everyone up on the dancing floor.  Just as the last row unravels, a shot rings out and the fun is over.  Louis is down.

As Louis is dying, he passes his room key to Jill and tells her to have Bob go to his room and to take his brush to the British Embassy.  Jill passes the message on to Bob, who finds that Louis's room is full of brushes but he eventually finds the right one and pockets the cryptic message inside before everyone and their brother march into Louis's room.  

The police question Jill since she was dancing with Louis when he died.  Bob is asked to join her, but on the way he gets a phone call: if he wants to see Betty alive again, he and Jill had better keep their mouths shut.  We cut to a shot of Betty being taken away by a big bad man on a sled.

Bob and Jill keep their mouths shut and return to England.  The police can't help but notice that they came home without their daughter, and tell them that they know that an assassination is about to happen and ask if just maybe they know something about that.  What Bob and Jill know is that they want their daughter returned to them alive so they say nothing.  However, they learn something from the police that helps them to decode the message that they got from Louis, so it's game on. 

Stuff happens, and I'll tell you this much, the next time that Jill picks up a gun, she does not miss the shot.

The Man Who Knew Too Much was a smash hit for Hitchcock, and the following success of The 39 Steps meant that he now had a say in the movies that he directed.  For whatever reason he decided to remake this story in 1956.

What I think of the movie

• Before: Love it
• After: Like it

This movie is pure Hitchcock and the story moves.  My only beef is that afterwards you realize that there are some pieces that don't add up.  But it's a fun ride, so all is forgiven.

Stuff to say about the O.G. compared to the remake, which I slammed pretty badly here.

• 1934 gives us a very trim 75 minute movie, the remake is two hours long.
• Most of the characters have different names.  Bob and Jill Lawrence in 1934, Ben and Jo McKenna in 1956.
• We're not clear on Bob and Jill's professions besides that they seem to be well off.  The remake goes on and on about him being a doctor and her being a famous singer who gave up her career to move to Indiana for his job.
• The child is a girl in 1934 and a boy in 1956.
• The Lawrences have to work their way through a bunch of cryptic clues to find Betty.  The McKennas get things spelled out a bit better.
• The first stop on the road to find Betty is a shady dentist.  In 1956 the first stop is a taxidermy shop.  Which is more creepy, 1930's dentistry or taxidermy in any year? 
• Bob and Jill are terrified for their daughter.  Ben and Jo seem much more detached.
• The scene in Albert Hall is very similar between the two movies.
• The mom's profession is key to saving the kid in 1934 and to finding the kid in 1956.  

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?  Yep!  This is the only Hitchcock movie to get a direct remake.

Actors of note, left handed actors, and actors that were frequent Hitchcock fliers: 

• Leslie Banks is Bob. We last saw him as the head of the pirate gang in Jamaica Inn.
• Nova Pilbeam as Betty.  We last saw her in Young and Innocent.
• Peter Lorre as Abbot, the head of the kidnapping gang.  We last saw him in Secret Agent, and if you've been around in the old movie space at all, you've seen him in The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca plus a million other movies.  Lorre had only been making movies for a few years at this point, but he was on a path to super stardom in his native Germany.  So why was he suddenly making movies outside of Germany in supporting roles?  Take a look at the year this movie was made and google his religion and you will have the answer.  He did not speak English at the time this movie was made, so he had to learn all of his lines phonetically.

Is this movie OK to show to middle school aged kids? If you can get them to sit through it, yes.

Rate the Hitchcock cameo!  Meh, he's crossing the street and you can barely see him.

Waltzes from Vienna (1934)

General plot summary and trivia

We're in old Vienna, and Johann Strauss, Sr. is all the rage.  This is great for everyone except Johann Strauss, Jr.  Junior wants to be a composer just like daddy, but daddy thinks that Junior is better off playing violin in his orchestra.

Junior is working on new tune, but having a bit of trouble with it.  His girlfriend, Resi, helps out by coming up with the words to the chorus.  In the meantime he's met Countess Helga, who has an idea for the lyrics for the verses.  While he's making music with the two ladies, we recognize that his tune is The Blue Danube Waltz, so we don't have much doubt about Junior's future.

The only question is how his love life is going to work out.  He loves Resi, but she's a simple gal who can't do anything to help his career.  Meanwhile Countess Helga has all kinds of ways to help an up and coming composer, as long as her husband doesn't find out.  Which woman will he choose, how long will the husband stay in the dark, and what does daddy think about all of this?

We haven't had a lot of historical movies about composers in the Hitchcock canon, and that's because this was his last movie before making it big with the back to back hits of The Man Who Knew Too Much and The 39 Steps.  Don't worry, we still have plenty of Hitchcock gems in the backlog, but we're also going to get more movies like this where he was in the directors pool along with everyone else and had to make the movies that he was given.

What I think of the movie

• Before: Don't remember it, no opinion
• After: Meh

As I've found with a few other movies, I don't believe that I had ever seen this movie before.  Or if I did, I must have found it to be so frustrating that I blocked it out of my head.  This is one that I can only recommend for Hitchcock completism purposes.

What's the problem here?

• The movie stars Jessie Matthews, who was a big musical star at the time and a phenomenal dancer.  Guess how much dancing she does in this movie, which is about a waltz?  ZERO.  What a waste of her time!  I'm so mad about this that I could spit.
• The movie is 75 minutes long and it is sloooow.  It felt like a three hour movie.

With that said, there is a lot of good stuff here as well:

• We get a lot of humor, both with things like the opening fire fighting scene, and later as the Countess tries to make time with Junior while keeping her husband in the dark.
• There are some heartfelt scenes as Resi gets pushed out of Junior's life while the Countess steps in.  In one scene the camera cuts between her singing the song by herself and Junior and the Countess singing together.
• The first public performance of the Blue Danube is everything.  Senior is supposed to conduct it, but he gets sabotaged by the Countess's husband, so Junior has to carry on the show.  At first the crowd doesn't know what to make of the new tune, but once they get it they start swaying and then break out into dance.
• The end of the movie where Senior acknowledges that Junior is here to stay is very sweet.
• Plus I did not know that there was a Strauss Senior and a Strauss Junior so I learned at least one thing from this movie.  However, before anyone gets too excited, Strauss Senior died before Junior wrote The Blue Danube Waltz, so you may want to get your Strauss education elsewhere.

Is there a MacGuffin? No

Does anyone get handcuffed in the movie?  As if

Is there a Wrong Man theme?  No

Is it set in/filmed in the Bay Area? No

Does a character have Mommy Issues? Junior has daddy issues

Are there elements of the movie that are similar to other Hitchcock movies?  No

Actors of note, left handed actors, and actors that were frequent Hitchcock fliers: 

• Jessie Matthews is Resi.  She was a huge movie star at the time, and a much better dancer than a singer.  Since Hitchcock didn't let us see her dance, I will!  [Related to my comment about her being a better dancer than a singer, you may want to click to the two minute mark which is where the dancing starts].  She is someone that I only learned about from Hitchcock, but by way of another movie which I will tell you about when we get there.  My favorite movie of hers is First a Girl, which was an early version of Victor/Victoria.

• Edmund Gwen is Senior, and he is a frequent Hitchcock flyer.  We've previously seen him in The Trouble With Harry and Foreign Correspondent, and we'll be seeing him once more.  Just a reminder that you know him as Santa in Miracle on 34th Street.  While all of the other actors phone it in, Gwen earns his pay with a heartfelt performance.

Is this movie OK to show to middle school aged kids? Lol only as a punishment.  This one was excruciating to sit through.

Rate the Hitchcock cameo!  Ain't got none.

Number Seventeen (1932)

General plot summary and trivia

Late at night a man is walking down the street and stops in front of a rundown house with the address of 17.  There is a for sale sign outside and the man notices that there is a light moving around inside, so he goes in to investigate.  He finds a body and another man...and slowly but surely a whole cast of characters shows up at the house and mayhem ensues.  Out of the group, who are the cops and who are the robbers?

Let's take a look!

Number 17 brings us into the world of early sound movies, and our first tip off is the first five minutes of the movie.  We have no sound except for accompanying music.  1932 was a bit late in the game for the early sound movie technique of "we're going to throw in some silent scenes and see if anyone notices", but it is interesting.

What I think of the movie

• Before: Don't remember it, but I think it was good
• After: Like it

I can't properly explain the plot of Number 17, because there isn't one.  A bunch of people show up in a creepy old house, stuff happens, and then everyone gets on a train and more stuff happens.  And you know what, sometimes plots are overrated.  This is a one hour and three minute movie that is a whale of a good time.  It's funny, it's creepy, and it's a little bit scary here and there.

Shoutout for toilet content!  We don't get to see the whole toilet, but it's one of those old ones where the tank is up way high near the ceiling, and something is hidden in the tank.  I don't know if we'll have any more toilets in our Hitchcock journey, but if I'd known that we were going to have three so far* I would have given this a unique tracking point.

*Secret Agent and Psycho are the other members of the Hitchcock Toilet Trifecta.

Is there a MacGuffin? The whole movie is a MacGuffin!

Does anyone get handcuffed in the movie?  Yes!  A pair of handcuffs turns up early in the movie and it's just a matter of time before they are used to lock someone up.

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!  Toward the end of the movie everyone is on a train and bouncing around from car to car like it's nothing.  It has a similar feel to Hannay's escape from the train in The 39 Steps and Gilbert's move between compartments by way of the outside in The Lady Vanishes.

This is not a repeat Hitchcock trope, but I wanted to call out that one of the characters is named Sheldrake.  The only reason that I mention this is that Billy Wilder used the name frequently in his movies (Sunset Boulevard, The Apartment, and Kiss Me, Stupid).  No one knows why he had a thing for this name, so I'm going with him being a Hitchcock fan until anyone says differently.

Actors of note, left handed actors, and actors that were frequent Hitchcock fliers: 

• John Stuart is the guy who walks by and takes us into the house.  We're going to be seeing him again.
• Donald Calthrop is one of the bad guys.  He's going to be hanging out with us quite a bit in our next two posts.

Is this movie OK to show to middle school aged kids? In the unlikely event that you can get them to sit down in front of it, sure.

Rate the Hitchcock cameo!  Too bad so sad no cameo.

Rich and Strange (1931)

General plot summary and trivia

We're in London at the end of the workday and we join Fred in the mad rush of his evening commute.  It's raining, his umbrella is broken, and it's a whole scene.  Fred finally arrives home where his wife, Emily, has dinner ready and is working on her sewing.  Fred snaps and tells Emily that he's fed up with their humdrum, boring life.

That's the cue for the mailman to show up with a letter from Fred's rich uncle.  Fred had previously sounded off to his uncle about his boring life, and uncle has had time to think it over and has decided to throw some money Fred's way now instead of leaving it to him in his will.  Fred and Emily are off on an adventure!

They start off in Paris, which is very exotic and out of their wheelhouse.  The next step is a long cruise.  Fred gets massively seasick and spends the first few days in bed, while Emily explores the ship and adapts to Cruise Life.  She meets Commander Gordon, a distinguished but sexy single man who is fascinated with her.  Oh hello, things like this did not happen back in her housewife days!  She is flattered but she toes the line.  But then Fred gets better and suddenly there is a sexy Princess on the scene who seems to think that Fred is the Sexiest Man Alive.  Oh hey, we didn't know that a partner swap was going to be on the dance card, but the name of the movie is Rich and Strange so here we are.

And then something happens and our story moves to yet another "did not see that coming" situation.

Rich and Strange's most unique feature is that large portions of the movie are silent.  When I say "silent" I don't mean that there is no sound, I mean that there is no dialogue but there is an accompanying music track. We get a ton of title cards that poke fun at our lead characters as they navigate their new world.  As we will see in our next two posts where we get into the transition from silent to sound movies, Hitchcock was very innovative in the early sound world, so it's a bit of a head scratcher that both Rich and Strange and Number 17 have silent scenes.  But it also adds an element of "we're here to have fun and we're not taking anything too seriously", so I'm all for it.

Let's take a look!

What I think of the movie

• Before: Good memories
• After: Like it

Rich and Strange is a ton of fun, with a more serious tone toward the end.  The partner swap comes out of left field only if you aren't used to movies from this time period.  If you are, then you'll have no trouble recognizing the basic plot of a 1924 movie called The Marriage Circle, which was made and remade throughout the silent and early sound era (1926's So This is Paris, 1932's One Hour With You).

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?  No

Actors of note, left handed actors, and actors that were frequent Hitchcock fliers: 

• Joan Barry is Emily.  We won't be seeing her again, but we will be hearing her.  Gold star if you know what this means, and if you don't, not to worry, you will soon be up to speed.
• Aw yiss our boyfriend Percy Marmont is the Commander.  We've previously seen him playing older gentlemen in Secret Agent and Young and Innocent, and here he gets to return to his heartthrob roots.

Is this movie OK to show to middle school aged kids? There is no reason why not, but it's extremely unlikely that you're going to find a kid in front of the TV when you turn this one on.  Something yucky happens in the final third of the movie, but it brings to mind something that happened on Stranger Things, so no biggie.

Rate the Hitchcock cameo!  Three strikes and we're out on cameos.

________

There you go, our latest batch of five movies!  Lemme know what you've seen and what you think, including if you've never heard of any of these.

What is in store for us next time?  We'll be firmly in the world of early sound movies, and we'll be seeing all that was good and all that was bad about that time.

Just an administrative note that we've been reviewing these movies in batches of five but there are 53 Hitchcock movies so we can't keep that pattern up.

Or can we?  Remember that I am an accountant so it is no problem at all for me to divide a list of 53 things into whole units of five.  But how?

The secret is that two of our remaining movies have two different versions so it works out that we have 55 movies to work with after all.  With that in mind, here are the five movies that we'll be talking about next time.

Elstree Calling (1930)

Juno and the Paycock (1930)

Murder! (1930) and Mary (1931)==>the British and German versions of the same movie

The Skin Game (1931)

Raise your hand if you know which other movie that was made before Elstree Calling exists in two versions.  And if not, don't worry because you'll be finding out soon enough when we get there.