BEFORE: At last, we're getting into some Hitchcock films that I've at least HEARD of. It was really touch-and-go for a while there with those silent films, I tell you. Linking from "The Man Who Knew Too Much", Charles Paton, Hitchcock's stock shopkeeper actor, was also in "The Young Mr. Pitt" with Robert Donat. After this, I don't really have to worry about linking for a while, because Hitchcock made a cameo in most of the rest of his films, usually playing a bus passenger or a man walking dogs or something.
THE PLOT: A man in London tries to help a counterespionage agent. But when the agent is killed and the man stands accused, he must go on the run to save himself and also stop a spy ring which is trying to steal top secret information.
AFTER: Still more improvement in the artistry here - this is another film about espionage, slightly more elegantly put together than last night's film. However, it's still quite vague on some of the details. We know there's some information stolen, we're told that it's some kind of important national secret, but darned if we're given the privilege of knowing exactly what it entails. I guess we don't need to know, in a way it's more intriguing if we don't, we can imagine it to be whatever we want. It's sort of like the contents of the briefcase in "Pulp Fiction".
What is important is that our hero is a regular guy who falls in with an agent, and is framed for her murder. So he goes on the run, and he heads for the next place that she said he was headed to - but he doesn't exactly know what to do, or who to look for when he gets there. So, (and I think this is key) he makes mistakes. It makes sense - any regular person thrust into a situation he doesn't understand is bound to make a slip-up or two.
That all went a long way towards making this one feel more realistic. Then there's a part in the middle where he's forced to go on the run again, but this time handcuffed to a woman. (In a rather large contrivance, he happened to meet her earlier in the film while on a train...) This middle part was quite reminiscent of "It Happened One Night", a very popular film released just one year prior, so I can't imagine that's a coincidence. Yes, the "two people forced to work together to survive" premise is a common one, but I see a lot of that Gable/Colbert relationship reflected here.
Another contrivance is the Memory Man, the man who's taken in all of the sports and geography and political facts, and is able to regurgitate them on command. He was sort of the Ken Jennings of the 1930's, I suppose. But his presence is still a little odd - does he absolutely HAVE to tell the truth about every question he is asked? If he were to tell a fib in response to a question that very few people knew the answer to, who would know? I'm also betting that Hitchcock regretting using the title of "The Man Who Knew Too Much" on that last film, because it seems to apply better here...
Also starring Madeleine Carroll, Godfrey Tearle, John Laurie (last seen in "The Shame of Mary Boyle"), Peggy Ashcroft (last seen in "A Passage to India"), Lucie Mannheim, Frank Cellier, Wylie Watson.
RATING: 5 out of 10 sheep
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