Quatre de l'espionnage

One of the more ignored early Hitchcock thrillers, and unjustly so. In 1916 Switzerland, Bookworm John Gielguld, Beautiful Maddeline Carroll and and Pesky, over sexed Peter Lorre are three very unlikely enlisted civilians made to assassinate an unknown foreign agent. One right after another fall superb Hitichcock scenes, high on visuals, in no need of dialog. Such scenes include Gielguld and Lorre discovering a murdered agent in a noisy Swiss church, an assassination seen through a telescope while the victim's dog howls mournfully, a chase through a chocolate factory. What hurts the film is Lorre's shameless overacting, and the too neat ending. It's as if Hitchcock decided "This is beginning to ramble, let's have an explosion here." Don't be put off by co-star Robert Young's comic relief, there's a reason for it. I could picture a 1950's remake, in Vistavision in color with Cary Grant, Grace Kelly and a more restrained Peter Lorre.

The series of espionage thrillers produced at British Gaumont Pictures in the mid-to-late 1930s, scripted by Charles Bennet and directed by Alfred Hitchcock, have a consistent quality to them. They don't repeat characters or plot elements, but they all follow a similar winning formula – not merely that of Hitchcockian suspense (of which there isn't really that much in Secret Agent), but of the notion that scrambling all over Europe bumping off spies and leaping off trains, constantly in fear of your own life, can be made to look rather good fun.

First we have the cast and characterisation. A relatively young John Gielgud takes the lead and, although the director reportedly didn't like his performance, he does here epitomise the classic British hero. Laid back, unassuming, with an air of effortlessness, he is in some ways reminiscent of a certain other fictional British spy popularised in the latter half of the twentieth century, although Gielgud's Ashendon is far more human than the somewhat mechanical Mr Bond. Paired with a bubbly and very believable Madeleine Carroll, and supported by bluff gentleman Percy Marmont, chirpy yank Robert Young and crazy generic foreigner Peter Lorre, the overall feel is like one of those "Brits on holiday" comedies. The only difference is, occasionally people kill each other or send out coded telegrams.

Then there is the Charles Bennet screenplay. Bennet was, after Elliot Stannard in the silent days, the second writer to really work well with The Master of Suspense™. Like Hitch, Bennet loves double meanings and secret knowledge. Take the scene where Gielgud arrives at the hotel finds out from the clerk that his new persona has a wife. He asks the clerk "Did she look well?" meaning of course "Is she attractive?" It is of course a little joke with no bearing on the plot, but it's moments like this that keep us engaging with the material and root us in the world of spying and bluffing. He also brings characters in with memorable bits of business to give us strong and meaningful impressions of them – for example Peter Lorre chasing a woman up the stairs or Percy Marmont being introduced when Gielgud trips over his dog.

And then there is the director, who is let's face it the only reason anyone pays attention to what would otherwise be obscure English films in the first place. Hitchcock has simplified and streamlined his technique, which a few years earlier had been little more than a needlessly showy display of camera tricks. He's still not subtle – he never would be – but at least he is now tasteful. We see here his regular method by which the camera leads the audience by the hand, dollying in on an object or throwing a close-up at us as if to shout "Look at this!" What's good about it is that it allows Hitchcock to move the audience at any rate he wants. At the end of the first scene there is a dolly in on a portrait of a soldier. No-one is looking at or gesturing at it, but Hitch forces us to take notice. Later, when Gielgud walks into his hotel room and finds both Carroll and Young inside, there is a quick montage of close-ups as he checks he has the right number, and we essentially ride with his thought process for a few seconds.

Secret Agent is by no means as good as The 39 Steps or The Lady Vanishes, not really having any major build-ups of suspense or danger. However, it does gently pull us along for a well-paced and slightly irreverent ride, and is ultimately watchable because it has very few bad bits. It is a good example what Hitchcock and co. were creating at Gaumont – pictures which were undemanding on the attention because they were smooth, unpretentious and yet continually gave us something to tickle the brain.

This, in my opinion, is one of the master's best early films, so good, in fact, that it begs for repeat viewing. That is the only way I know to absorb the subtle verbal repartees (observe the fascinating expressions and body language of Madeleine Carroll as she repeatedly defends herself from the blandishments of the affable American played by Robert Young); the hilarious malapropisms and convoluted syntax courtesy of the unpredictably eccentric Peter Lorre (there is good reason to believe this was unfeigned because Mr. Lorre, a Hungarian by birth who had achieved a well-deserved reputation as a chilling screen presence in German cinema before leaving for England following the National Socialist take-over, had not yet mastered the nuances of the English language); the classic understatement by that most aristocratic of all British actors, John Gielgud; and for those of us who never tire gazing at the incomparably beautiful Madeleine (Elsa) Carroll, the camera angles finally do justice to her divinely-wrought features (she also delivers her usual elegantly controlled performance). And, of course, there is all of the excitement and suspense one comes to expect from the great Alfred Hitchcock... Needless to say, I highly recommend this film.

A young British army officer is 'killed off' on the Western Front so that he can assume a false identity and go to Switzerland on a secret mission. Brody (or Ashenden, as he is now known) finds the dirty business of espionage distasteful, but is determined to see his mission through to a successful conclusion.

In this early Hitchcock thriller, John Gielgud plays Ashenden as a cheerless snob. His acting is wooden and unappealing, and his embraces with Elsa (Madeleine Carroll)are cold and unconvincing. Peter Lorre is an over-the-top delight as 'the General', the exotic and nasty little assassin. His toilet-paper tantrum is great fun, and he moves the plot along with superb little nuances of gesture (as when he follows the progress of the chocolate-box note).

There are some striking Hitchcockian moments. Is that the Master himself, coming down the ship's gangway ahead of Ashenden? The dead organist is 'playing' a constant discord alone in the Langenkirche, because his lifeless head is slumped on the organ keys. In a classic piece of tension-building, Hitchcock makes the organ sound swell dramatically as Ashenden and the General, unsuspecting, approach the body. Of course the corpse shouldn't be able to increase the organ's volume. That doesn't matter. The effect is great.

The scene shifts from London in an air raid to the Swiss Alps (and as a postscript, to the Bulgarian-Greek border). The main locations are attractively depicted, London's sky a lattice of searchlights, and Switzerland a mountain idyll.

Hitchcock plays clever tricks with the button found in the dead man's hand. It sets our heroes off in pursuit of Caypor, and then it comes back to haunt Elsa's conscience. When the folk singers swirl coins in bowls, Elsa can see only the infernal button. It does not bother the viewer that the coincidences surrounding the button are far-fetched, because the pace and confidence of the story-telling suppresses any incipient scepticism.

The incident on the Langen Alp is in many ways the film's climax, with Hitchcock's trademark suspense-building very much to the fore. As the much-dreaded moment draws near, the cuts to the polite German conversation class raise the viewer's anxiety to an unbearable pitch. Caypor's frantic dog is a masterly touch: the women and the pet know intuitively that the worst has happened. Soon afterwards, Elsa sits silent in her misery between Ashenden and the General, who both chat blithely across her. The camera closes in on her, explaining her feelings of guilt better than any dialogue could.

Throughout his long career, Hitchcock pursued a specific ideal of feminine beauty. Kim Novak and Tippi Hedren were its 1960's manifestation, and here in 1936 Madeleine Carroll is the fresh-faced girl with the fine bone structure and the blonde bob.

The arbitrary deaths in the final reel are silly, and the crash of the model train even sillier, but by this stage the director has eschewed exposition and is hurrying to tie up the plot's loose ends. Even if the viewer thinks hard, he is at a loss to explain what Ashenden was ever doing in Switzerland in the first place: but the trick is not to think too hard.

Hitchcock was an extremely visual film-maker as a rule and this film took an entirely different direction. What I remember most are the sounds - or more specifically, the noises. The discordant sound of the organ, for example, stands out. It isn't pretty and why should it be? The organist's dead after all. The noise in the chocolate factory is a continuous din relieved only by a fire alarm! Then, two of the main characters are caught in the bell-tower of a church when the bells begin to ring. Again, the sound isn't pleasant at all but quite annoying. A "musical" scene with yodelers ends up with coins being swirled around plates and is almost overbearing. The dog's howling in its psychic moment is long and unnerving. In all, these sound effects set the audience on edge which I think was part of the original plan. The two central characters are uneasy with their task and we are made to suffer too. This is an unusual film for Hitch and well worth the time.

Curtis Stotlar