I just re-read The Thirty-Nine Steps to test
my memory. And it is also a very good quick read. When I watched the original
39 Steps by Hitchcock a short while ago I thought I recalled the differences
from the book but I wasn't really sure. For the most part I got it right.
And I also wanted to see if my recollection of this film - seen probably
20 years ago - was in the neighborhood - was it a remake of Hitchcock's film
or did it use the book more as its source. Very much a remake of the Hitchcock
film with just enough changes to make it interesting - but all the main points
are repeated here. Hannay meets the lady spy differently than in Hitchcock
and instead of giving a speech at the campaign rally he gets forced into
giving a lecture at a girl's school. Where the woman he would get handcuffed
to works (in the book there is no woman). But for the most part it stays
on course - the milkman, on the run in Scotland, the missing finger, Mr.
Memory and a camera pan of the two of them holding hands at the end.
Even so this is a very decent film. Largely because Hannay as played by Kenneth
More is very personable and easy to spend 90-minutes with. Perhaps he plays
his character as too confident and casual considering his life is in danger
much of the time but that is the British way. More appeared mainly in English
films in his career and I know him primarily for playing Father Brown in
the TV series. The girl is no Madeleine Carroll - warmer - attractive - but
she isn't as memorable or icy beautiful. She is Taina Elg, a Finnish actress
who apparently was big back home. A Miss Marple spotting. That is Joan Hickson
who would become Miss Marple years later - she plays the woman introducer
at the girl's school. There is also a nice bit from Brenda de Banzie (Hobson's
Choice, The Man Who Knew Too Much) as a fortune teller who helps out Hannay
and makes it clear she is available for more. And Sidney James is the truck
driver - another almost only English actor who was in a bunch of the Carry
On films. There are a few other 39 Steps out there - a 1978 version
with Robert Powell as Hannay. He was to go on to play Hannay in a TV series
ten years later. And a 2008 TV film which appears to take parts from the
book and parts from the films. And I saw that Benedict Cumberbatch had signed
up for a Netflix series. That will take some stretching as the book is only
slightly more than 100 pages.
