The 39 Steps (1935)
There's a moment in The 39 Steps where Robert Donat finds himself handcuffed to Madeleine Carroll and the pair have to navigate a Scottish hillside together, bickering and stumbling, and it's genuinely charming. It's also the moment that best captures what this film is: enormously likeable, sharply made, and just a little bit slight. Hitchcock was already showing us exactly who he was going to become. He just wasn't quite there yet.
The setup is the kind of thing that would become a genre staple. An ordinary man stumbles into a spy conspiracy, finds himself framed for murder, and has to go on the run to clear his name before the real villains finish whatever it is they're up to. The wrongly accused everyman, the reluctant female companion, the shadowy organisation with a reach that extends everywhere. You can draw a straight line from this film to half the espionage thrillers made in the following fifty years. In that sense, watching The 39 Steps now is a bit like seeing the blueprint before the building goes up.
Donat is very good. He plays Richard Hannay with a kind of nimble, self-deprecating wit that stops the film from taking itself too seriously, and he makes the leaps of logic the plot requires feel almost reasonable. Carroll, meanwhile, refuses to simply be decorative. Her performance has real spine to it, and the gradual thaw between the two leads feels earned rather than obligatory. Their chemistry is what gives the film its warmth, and Hitchcock clearly knows it, lingering on their scenes together in ways that show an instinct already fully formed.
The direction is crisp and economical throughout. There's no fat here. Hitchcock uses location shooting and clever editing to move the story along without ever leaning on spectacle, and there are individual sequences that crackle with the kind of playful, understated tension he'd later refine to something approaching perfection. Compared to, say, Vertigo or Rear Window, this feels like a sketch rather than a finished canvas. But it's a very confident sketch.
And yet. Watching it now, the seams do show. The pacing, brisk as it is for 1935, lacks the rhythmic variety that would come to define his best work. Characters make decisions that serve the plot more than they serve themselves. The tonal gear changes between breezy romantic comedy and genuine jeopardy can feel a little abrupt, as though the film isn't quite sure how seriously it wants to be taken. None of this is fatal, but it does keep the film at a certain distance.
It's worth noting that this sits in a particularly fertile run of British Hitchcock. I've also reviewed The Man Who Knew Too Much and Sabotage, and taken together the three films read almost like a master class in a director figuring out the precise mechanics of screen suspense in real time. The 39 Steps might be the most purely enjoyable of the trio, but it's also the one that wears its limitations most plainly.
None of that means it isn't worth your time. It absolutely is. The leads are a joy, the film moves, and there's a real pleasure in watching Hitchcock's instincts already operating at something close to full capacity, even if the tools available to him haven't caught up yet. It's a historically significant film that also happens to be genuinely entertaining, which is more than you can say for plenty of things that get filed under "important early work."
Just don't go in expecting the psychological weight or the visual complexity of his later pictures. This is Hitchcock finding his feet, and finding them on a Scottish moor, handcuffs and all. Three and a half stars.
Rating: ★★★½ | Year: 1935 | Watched: 2026-05-25
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Amazon Prime Video · Shout! Factory Amazon Channel · Amazon Prime Video with Ads · Artiflix
Rent: Amazon Video
Buy: Apple TV Store · Amazon Video
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Stream: Amazon Prime Video · HBO Max Amazon Channel · Philo · HBO Max
Rent: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Fandango At Home
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Fandango At Home
Physical: Amazon US
Affiliate disclosure: Movies With Macca may earn a small commission on purchases or subscriptions started via these links. It costs you nothing extra.
