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November 05, 2006

The 39 Steps - 6

This early (1935) Hitchcock film takes place in London and Scotland. A Canadian tourist runs into a women who seems paranoid to secret agents following her. When she ends up dead, he goes on the search to find her killers, and discover if she was telling the truth. The film is significant because of it pushes the limits of censorship of the time, and is somewhat of a text example of cinematography and light. While I enjoyed the film, it is not Hitchcock's best- the story is very slow moving. Rear Window and Mr. & Mrs. Smith are much more fun and well done.

2 comments:

Jason said...

Hitchcock constantly pushed the envelope as to what he could show. His movies always had dark little innuendos or thematic elements that barely made it to the screen.

~greg said...

I'm not 100% sure about this, but I suspect that it was filmed and produced in England, becuase of the censor standards of the time. I agree, Hitchcock was great with subtlety.