269 - The 39 Steps, 1935, United Kingdom. Dir. Alfred Hitchcock.

Tuesday, September 26, 2017

269 - The 39 Steps, 1935, United Kingdom.  Dir. Alfred Hitchcock.

We open on a Music Hall.

First shot:  "MUSIC HALL"  The sign scrolls across the screen from right to left, each letter a capital, each lit with lightbulbs, each letter dark when it enters frame, each lighting up when it reaches the center.  Think of a less grand version of the opening title of Gone with the Wind done four years later.  Think of Tarantino's "MISSISSIPPI" homage in Django Unchained.

Second shot:  Dutch angle.  A high angle looking down.  Tilted.  Crooked.  Looking down at the ticket window.  "Stalls, Including Tax, Weekdays 1', Saturdays & Holidays 1'6.  First a shadow appears, then the back of a body.  A portion of the back and arm of a man in an overcoat.  We never see him.  He buys a ticket.  "Stall, please."

Third shot:  A high angle looking down.  At a doorway.  We see only the legs and feet of a woman walking towards us from the other room, the hands of the usher reaching out in our room, and the hand of our man holding the ticket, passing it to the usher.  He passes through the door.  The woman stays in the other room and goes the other way.

Fourth shot:  A high angle looking down.  The dirty floor of the music hall.  A wrought-iron framed wooden bench.  A dusty, tattered rug down the aisle.  Debris in the floor.  A seated man's shoe.  Our man's feet pass by.  He enters the row of the wrought-iron, wooden bench.  He shimmies down the row.  Suddenly, we tilt up and dolly left down the row two rows behind him, watching his back as he moves to his seat.  He sits.  His collar is turned up.  Yet we catch a glimpse of the back profile of his face and his outstretched arm.

This is our hero.  Introduced as a shadow.  As the back of an overcoat.  As a hand with a ticket.  As shoes walking.  As the back of a head and an outstretched arm.

We cut to the band and move on.  The band plays.  We still have not seen our hero's face.

In fact, a few moments later when we first see a view of the audience from the stage, we still do not see our hero.  His body double is sitting in his seat.  But we do not think about that because we do not yet know where in the room he is sitting.

This is Alfred Hitchcock.

One cannot help but watch his movies this way.  He is a master technician.  And the technical mastery excites the viewer as much as the emotional impact.

And when you read him, you discover that he was concerned only with the emotional impact of the film, that the technical mastery functioned only to serve the emotions.  He did not think in terms of technique in order to show off technique or to impress.  He thought of technique as a means to make people feel.  He wanted movies to entertain.

And how many people now believe he was the best at doing that.

The music is playing.  The lights are flashing.  The standing-room-only audience is raucous.  Men are buying drinks at the bar at the back of the room.  People are getting tipsy.  Let's get this show started.

The emcee introduces Mr. Memory.

Mr. Memory commits fifty new facts to memory every day.  He now knows millions and millions of facts.

Did the screenwriters not do their math?  Millions and millions?  From fifty a day?  As it turns out, one could memorize over one million facts in 55 years if one did 50 a day.  The actor playing Mr. Memory, Wylie Watson, was 46 when this movie came out.

Ah, but forget about the math.  This is a show!  This man is SMART!  He knows everything!  Ask him a question.  He knows millions and millions of facts.

People ask phony questions for a laugh.  A few ask real questions.  Mr. Memory answers all of them, followed by, "Am I right, Sir?" (even when a woman asks).  A farmer repeatedly tries to ask, "What causes pip in poultry?"  His wife berates him.  He persists anyway.  Their own fowl have it.  He needs to know.  He will never get his question answered.

Our hero tries to get in a question, but a boy behind him beats him to it.  He is patient.  After a few more, he asks again, and finally we see his face, straight on, lit separately from the rest of the crowd, framed dead center.

"How far is Winnipeg from Montreal?"  We discover he is from Canada.  Mr. Memory answers correctly.

A fight breaks out.

A woman's gloved hand enters frame right, holding a small handgun.  She squeezes.  The gun goes off.  People turn.  People scream.  People run out of the hall.  But no one knows who fired the gun.

Chaos reigns.

The band plays to try to keep the show going.  The emcee tries to keep the people from leaving.  But they leave in droves.

We look down from above.  High angle.  Our hero somehow bumps into a woman.  They find themselves pressed together in the press.  Embracing.  They walk out.

The high angle signals fate.  Or providence.  We see them come together from God's perspective.  Their lives are now intertwined.

She asks if she may come home with him.

He answers, "It's your funeral."

It will be.

They take a bus.  He takes her home.  Portland Place.  His name is newly added to the list of tenants.  Richard Hannay.  He is recently arrived from Canada.  His furniture is covered in sheets.  He has windows not yet covered in curtains.  She hides from the windows.  She fears something.  She does not wish to be seen.

He will discover that she is an international spy.  A spy for hire.  A woman without a country.

She fired the shots in the music hall.  In order to escape.  She was following two men.  They recognized her.  Beware of the man missing a segment of his pinky finger.

The men on the street below are after her.  Do not answer the ringing telephone.  It is they who are calling from the public phone booth below.

She tells him of a secret called The 39 Steps and that she must meet a man in Scotland to pass along information.

She will enter his room the next morning.  With a knife in her.  Clutching a map of Scotland.

He takes the map.  He sees the circled farm.  Alt-na-Shellach.  Up the road from Killin.

Killin.

Killing.

Hannay decides to complete her task for her.  To go to Scotland.  To go to Alt-na-Shellach.  To tell them about the 39 steps.  To warn about the man with the shortened pinky finger.

First, he must escape his own apartment building.  The two men await him outside the front door.  He will work it out with the milkman to borrow his coat and hat and milk pony to exit in disguise.  The milkman does not believe Hannay's story of international intrigue, but he buys into the idea that he must escape from his lover's husband.  And he is happy to help.

We now embark on our journey.

A train ride on the Flying Scotsman and across the Firth of Forth over the Forth Bridge.  Across the moors.  With stops at a farmhouse.  And the house at Al-na-Shellach.  He will be chased, helped, double-crossed, shot at, arrested, escaped, picked-up, handcuffed, and helped again.  He will jump the train, run across the moors, climb hills, change coats, hide under bridges, jump through windows, blend in parades, hide in a Assembly Hall, give an impromptu speech as another man, and be handcuffed to a woman who does not believe him.

Somehow in all the excitement he will find his way to the London Palladium.

Where Mr. Memory is performing again.

And it will all come together.

In the final showdown.

Which may end well, or may end badly.

Or both.

Depending on who you are.

And Hannay and Annabella and John and Margaret and Jordan and Pamela will have experienced a whirlwind of adventure.

And Hitchcock, with his twenty-second film and his second international success, will have established himself once and for all as a director on his way to making history.