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From London to the Highland Moors and back, a Canadian's tour. A fine dash of chaos gets it rolling, the layering of applause and catcalls at a music hall culminates with a gunshot that points the vacationing businessman (Robert Donat) toward a secret agent (Lucie Mannheim). "Beautiful, mysterious woman pursued by gunmen. Sounds like a spy story." The knife in her back gleams in the middle of the night, morning comes and he's a fugitive. Kafka is funny and Alfred Hitchcock's Kafka doubly so, a POV shot during the train ride to Scotland splits the screen horizontally between a newspaper with incriminating pictures and the grinning eyes of a brassiere salesman. (A chase halts for a second so a cheery porter can offer a spot of tea in the dining car.) The shadowy leader is a Mabuse, "he has a dozen names and can look like a hundred people," his latest guise is that of a family man (Godfrey Tearle). The protagonist's suave comedy of anxiety cries for a partner, he gets one in the blonde (Madeleine Carroll) who reluctantly joins the manacled race: "There are 20 million women on this island, and I'm chained to you!" The amputated pinky joint and the bullet in the hymn book, even Magritte's pipe makes an appearance. The camera jiggles inside a moving car and then backs away to watch it drive up the hilly, winding road, at the countryside hotel it simply tilts down from the handcuffed couple on the bed for a Buñuelian view of damp nylons being peeled off. (By contrast, the interlude with the dour crofter and his young wife gives the skeleton of a Pinter playlet, piercingly fleshed out by John Laurie and Peggy Ashcroft.) Loyalty to art more than to conspirators, the dilemma of Mr. Memory (Wylie Watson) is resolved with a swift nod to D.W. Griffith and a death concealed by rows of dancing chorines—the dark roots behind the crowd-pleasing veneers, the Hitchcock signature. Cinematography by Bernard Knowles. With Frank Cellier, Jerry Verno, Gus McNaughton, and Peggy Simpson. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |