PEOPLE keep making the mistake of thinking that Alfred Hitchcock made mystery films (or, heaven forfend, detective movies); far from it. Hitchcock made suspense films, with all of the action pivoting around some THING that serves to kickstart the story. He called it the "maguffin" (variously spelled), and as far as he was concerned it didn't matter what the thing was (a dead body, a case of mistaken identity, a cryptic message, a suspicious-looking bottle of wine)—it really didn't matter. This attitude probably derived from his exposure to the concept of "pure cinema," the elusive goal of achieving perfect expression through the medium of film unencumbered by story-telling conventions. But the opposite actually happened. His movies were based on some pre-existing literature that served as the matrix for the maguffin to simmer inside of, albeit the original source seldom survived intact.
All of this serves as a rather long-winded introduction to a short posting about a film that caught the public's eye in 1935 and helped land Hitchcock solidly in Hollywood the next decade. Note how the critic hits upon the themes that appealed to general audiences at the time and which Hitchcock was happy to repeat for the next thirty-plus years.
A review of The 39 Steps by Pare Lorentz, McCall's Magazine, September 1935.
Resources:
- Wikipedia has a page devoted to The 39 Steps (WARNING! SPOILERS! HERE), and there's a TCM page (WARNING! SPOILERS! HERE).
- Last year we came across a profile article of Hitchcock during his golden days in Hollywood (HERE).
The bottom line:
Unless otherwise noted, all bibliographical data are derived from The FictionMags Index created by William G. Contento & edited by Phil Stephensen-Payne.
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