This series is devoted to considering the classics of cinema, both the well-recognized and the overlooked.

I have chosen to begin this column with the work of a director who has truly earned his timeless reputation: Alfred Hitchcock. This would seem like a very logical choice; outside of perhaps Orson Welles, there are few directors who can claim the enormous level of influence that Hitchcock can. However, I chose not to focus on one of the many familiar American efforts that Hitchcock produced, such as Psycho or North by Northwest. Instead, I would like to examine the numerous merits of one of his most enduring British films, The 39 Steps.

The 39 Steps is a film that exists in a genre that Hitchcock did much to popularize — the espionage film (he would explore it once again in The Lady Vanishes, Notorious, and Topaz). It relates the tale of Canadian native Richard Hannay, a handsome and charismatic gentleman who has decided to pay a visit to London. At the end of a performance in a local music hall, gunshots are fired, and Hannay flees with a mysterious woman named Anabella Smith to his apartment. Once arriving to the safety of his own home, Smith informs Hannay that she is in fact a spy who has acquired confidential information concerning something known as "the 39 steps". Hannay is rather skeptical of Smith's story, until she waltzes into his room with a knife thrust in her back. With the complication of a false murder charge being attributed to him, Hannay begins a daring search to discover exactly what "the 39 steps" is in an effort to clear his name and expose those responsible for the murder.

One of the first things that is a joy to observe in this film are the embryonic stages of many techniques that Hitchcock would come to master later. For example there is a brilliantly edited scene where the cleaning lady in Hannay's apartment discovers the body and opens her mouth to scream. However, when her mouth opens the sound of a locomotive is released rather than a woman's voice, and the scene then quickly cuts to the train on which Hannay has escaped. There is yet another scene filmed from within an automobile that Hannay has been imprisoned in; the shot slowly rotates inside the vehicle and then proceeds to zoom out until it is outside of the vehicle. Even in his earlier feature length efforts, Hitchcock was already experimenting with the medium.

One of the more under-appreciated marvels of Hitchcock's films that is on display here is his talent for crafting films with strong dialogue and charming characters. Robert Donat proves to be mesmerizing in his role as Richard Hannay, and has many of the same everyman qualities that Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart possessed in Hitchcock's later works. And the dialogue not only succeeds in building the paranoia and panicky tone of the film, but also reveals Hithcock's penchant for humorous moments. One particularly funny scene can be found in the scene where Hannay is speaking to the milkman of his apartment:

Richard Hannay: Are you married?

Milkman: Yes, but don't rub it in.