Season 40 - The 39 Steps (2010)
The first time I ever heard of The 39 Steps was when my mom got her complete set of The Franklin Library of Mystery Masterpieces. I spent hours pouring over the covers of the books. The one that fascinated and intrigued me the most was The 39 Steps. It was a pen and ink drawing of what appeared to be a giant black cloud or rock hovering over a staircase going down the side of a cliff. It was unnerving and strange so it should come as no surprise that it was done by Edward Gorey. At the time I was not yet an avid reader so books were all about their outward aesthetic and this one has always stayed with me. Which is why when I started to get into film, and in particular Alfred Hitchcock, I was really excited to watch his adaptation of The 39 Steps. Hitchcock, especially in his early films, is very hit or miss. I feel like 1940 and Rebecca was his turning point. Therefore The 39 Steps, made five years earlier, suffers. It doesn't help that a lot of outdoor scenes were filmed on sound stages. This is something that is a personal pet peeve of mine, primarily because of Hitchock's Suspicion. Therefore when it was announced that there was a new version of The 39 Steps coming out staring Rupert Penry-Jones I was more than a little excited. He is Captain Wentworth in my favorite version of Persuasion, so I was all in, even if he wouldn't reach the pinnacle of his career until a year after The 39 Steps with Whitechapel. When creating this adaption they wanted to go all in on the Bond meets Bourne vibes, but I think of it more as Lord Peter Wimsey meets Indiana Jones. There's an elegance to Penry-Jones as Hannay that is more upper class English gentleman than Bond ever was. He's also just reacting to situations he's thrust into, much like Bourne, but oh so British. Bond was almost always in control and too cool a customer. This was just a thrilling adventure with some of the best of British television stars where sadly David Haig was playing against type as the baddie. Which is why I feel it's more in the territory of Indiana Jones. This could be an exciting serial at the cinema back in the day. And much like Professor Jones, I objected to some of Hannay's more sexist attitudes towards women. But by the end his partner in crime, Victoria Sinclair, had more than corrected all of his attitudes with her competence and cunning. The fact that a woman with eidetic memory saves the day really warmed my cold embittered heart. Yet the highlight for me, and for Rupert Penry-Jones according to interviews, is that they totally did the crop duster scene from North by Northwest. Now you might think they just added this as a little nod to Hitchcock's film but that isn't the only reason why. In the book when he arrives in Scotland Hannay's pursuers use a plane to find him. So maybe Hitchcock liked the scene from the book so much that instead of using it in his adaptation he kept it to use on a later film? I'm just saying it's a possibility. But the biggest possibility I wished for this movie hasn't come to pass, and that's a sequel. As I mentioned before it has that vibe of adventure serials which inspired Indiana Jones, and it's not like John Buchan wrote only one Richard Hannay adventure. He appears in eight books! Why can't we just have more fun shows like this? Well, probably because of all the people bitching about the wrong make and model of cars in this and not just taking it as it is.... But I can't blame them too much, I'm a pedant too depending on the topic.
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