Framed to Perfection XXI

THE 39 STEPS (1935)

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Cinematographer: Bernard Knowles

One of my all-time favourite “drunk movies”, because it is now so dated that it tips over into being ridiculously camp and silly.

I mean, this scene in particular, in which a randy single bloke picks up a sultry foreign babe at a nightclub, only to take her back to his pad for some boring fried haddock, is enough to illicit giggles on its own. You’d think she’d be the one handing out warm fish, am I right?!

Anyone?! No? Oh well…

Still, Hitchcock chips away at the sexual repression of the time, which sadly now appears to be returning to British society. He hints at so much kinky business, whilst keeping it subtle enough so that idiot Christian moralists of the time wouldn’t pick up on it.

What a genius.

The 39 Steps is cute and quaint and cosy and suspenseful and thrilling, all in one package. It also shares a problem I have with 1979’s Mad Max, in which the plot reported by lazy professional reviewers isn’t actually the plot you get. Just as Mad Max is not really about “a man who seeks revenge after his family is murdered” (although that does eventually happen 15 minutes before the end of the film), neither is The 39 Steps about “a fugitive and a blonde handcuffed together”. Yes, that does happen, but it’s such a small sequence and not what the film is about, overall.

The above shot is very interesting, as you see both Richard Hannay and his wilful sex guest in the same shot, thanks to a gigantic mirror on the wall. The flat is so stark, as many single mens’ abodes are, that you absolutely believe it as a location. Also, the constant phone ringing, erm, rings a bell with me, as, being a confirmed bachelor in council dwellings myself, you are pestered all day every day about petty nonsense that some bureaucrat somewhere thinks matters.

And I used to be one of those bureaucrats.

While now seen as cosy, including by the likes of me, The 39 Steps is edgier than a casual viewer might imagine, which is why it has perhaps endured for 90-fucking-years.

Where does all the time go?

Do stay in touch, darlings.

Toodles!