El agente secreto

A young British army officer is 'killed off' on the Western Front so that he can assume a false identity and go to Switzerland on a secret mission. Brody (or Ashenden, as he is now known) finds the dirty business of espionage distasteful, but is determined to see his mission through to a successful conclusion.

In this early Hitchcock thriller, John Gielgud plays Ashenden as a cheerless snob. His acting is wooden and unappealing, and his embraces with Elsa (Madeleine Carroll)are cold and unconvincing. Peter Lorre is an over-the-top delight as 'the General', the exotic and nasty little assassin. His toilet-paper tantrum is great fun, and he moves the plot along with superb little nuances of gesture (as when he follows the progress of the chocolate-box note).

There are some striking Hitchcockian moments. Is that the Master himself, coming down the ship's gangway ahead of Ashenden? The dead organist is 'playing' a constant discord alone in the Langenkirche, because his lifeless head is slumped on the organ keys. In a classic piece of tension-building, Hitchcock makes the organ sound swell dramatically as Ashenden and the General, unsuspecting, approach the body. Of course the corpse shouldn't be able to increase the organ's volume. That doesn't matter. The effect is great.

The scene shifts from London in an air raid to the Swiss Alps (and as a postscript, to the Bulgarian-Greek border). The main locations are attractively depicted, London's sky a lattice of searchlights, and Switzerland a mountain idyll.

Hitchcock plays clever tricks with the button found in the dead man's hand. It sets our heroes off in pursuit of Caypor, and then it comes back to haunt Elsa's conscience. When the folk singers swirl coins in bowls, Elsa can see only the infernal button. It does not bother the viewer that the coincidences surrounding the button are far-fetched, because the pace and confidence of the story-telling suppresses any incipient scepticism.

The incident on the Langen Alp is in many ways the film's climax, with Hitchcock's trademark suspense-building very much to the fore. As the much-dreaded moment draws near, the cuts to the polite German conversation class raise the viewer's anxiety to an unbearable pitch. Caypor's frantic dog is a masterly touch: the women and the pet know intuitively that the worst has happened. Soon afterwards, Elsa sits silent in her misery between Ashenden and the General, who both chat blithely across her. The camera closes in on her, explaining her feelings of guilt better than any dialogue could.

Throughout his long career, Hitchcock pursued a specific ideal of feminine beauty. Kim Novak and Tippi Hedren were its 1960's manifestation, and here in 1936 Madeleine Carroll is the fresh-faced girl with the fine bone structure and the blonde bob.

The arbitrary deaths in the final reel are silly, and the crash of the model train even sillier, but by this stage the director has eschewed exposition and is hurrying to tie up the plot's loose ends. Even if the viewer thinks hard, he is at a loss to explain what Ashenden was ever doing in Switzerland in the first place: but the trick is not to think too hard.

When the topic of spy movies comes up, James Bond is usually one of the first names to arise. But even spy movies had a beginning, and sure enough, in the first couple decades of cinema, who was there making spy movies? Alfred Hitchcock.

Like the other spy movies he did, (Take Torn Curtain and Topaz for instance, two of his later works. How much later? Nearly 40 years later), Secret Agent is a spy movie without lots of explosions or car chases or shootouts. Instead it is about a man who goes undercover to break up a potentially disastrous international agenda of some kind, and along the way falls in love with his partner and realizes that he's not up to the task of murdering someone.

This 1936 movie is another in Hitchcock's decade-long run of British talkies: highly-contrasted black and white, under 90 minutes generally, and devoid of major stars (except for Peter Lorre, who appears in this movie two years after he did The Man Who Knew Too Much).

But unlike many of the movies surrounding it (Young and Innocent, The 39 Steps), this one isn't quite as good. Not that Secret Agent is a bad movie, far from it:

The directing is fine, and the church-murder scene is a beautiful mix of sound and picture. Lorre is much like the male version of Bette Davis - overacting and proud of it. His role as the womanizing yet clever "General" is much lighter than his usual horror-laced stuff, and he still pulls it off with ease. The leads are equally good. And the humor laced throughout is genuinely funny. (Note that, even in 1936, it is obvious that Hitchcock was already looking for the actress that would be fulfilled in Grace Kelly - the strong, feisty, beautiful blonde leading lady.)

But there's nothing here to just make the jaw drop and the eyes widen. It is a good movie, and from a director that has had whole decades worth of *great* movies, it just seems subpar. A previous commentor was right: This was the movie for Hitchcock to remake in the 1950s (with color and Cary Grant and Grace Kelly - heck, maybe even a minor role for Jimmy Stewart), not The Man Who Knew Too Much, which was one of his best British films.

Overall, it is good and worth the watch - especially for Hitchcock fans, but it's just not quite *there*.

7/10

While not one of Hitchcock's most well-known films, "Secret Agent" is one of his most creative. His version of the world of espionage is quite different from, and much richer than, the usual James Bond-type spy story. This movie is also distinguished by large doses of good humor and by some creative uses of the story's setting in Switzerland.

John Gielgud plays Ashenden, an English spy in World War I. He is assigned to go to Switzerland, determine the identity of an important German agent, and then stop the enemy agent before he can carry out his mission. Gielgud has two assistants: a young agent posing as his wife (Madeleine Carroll) and an eccentric assassin (Peter Lorre). What makes the film interesting is that Gielgud's character is not at all the stereotyped dashing movie spy, and he has a keen sense of the human cost involved in what he is doing. By contrast, his two assistants are both excited about the mission, and look forward to the game of tracking down and eliminating their quarry. As the story proceeds, it is the reluctant but responsible Ashenden who persists in continuing the mission in spite of some bad surprises, while the once enthusiastic "Mrs. Ashenden" quickly begins to lose heart when she realizes what espionage is really all about. At the same time, the twists and turns of the mission itself lead to some interesting and tense developments. This is all handled with Hitchcock's usual mastery of suspense and irony.

Hitchcock also makes full use of the setting, and typical Swiss themes like mountain climbing, chocolate, and folk dancing are all part of the plot. Hitchcock makes use of these elements in a natural way, not forcing them into the plot, and the whole production is nicely crafted. There are some excellent scenes, including a scene in an old country church that combines humor and suspense, and a chase through a chocolate factory.

Because its hero has a reluctance about his mission that we do not expect in our spy heroes, "Secret Agent" has never been one of Hitchcock's most popular films. And the story does have some odd aspects to it. But this is quite a good film, worthy of attention, and one that shows many aspects of the great director's skill and imagination.

... itself based on W. Somerset Maugham's novel Ashenden. In 1916, British Army officer Edgar Brodie (John Gielgud) is conscripted into the intelligence bureau. He's given the name "Ashenden" and assigned to assassinate an unknown enemy agent. Ashenden is given a "wife" (Madeleine Carroll) as part of his cover, as well as the assistance of an oddball professional killer known as "the General" (Peter Lorre). While Ashenden and the General hunt for the enemy agent's identity, the "wife" makes time with American playboy Robert Marvin (Robert Young). With Percy Marmont, Florence Kahn, Charles Carson, and Lilli Palmer.

It's interesting to see Gielgud in a leading role, although it's quickly evident why it didn't happen more often. He lacks any romantic chemistry with Carroll, and he frequently seems bored by the proceedings. Carroll and Young both do well with under-thought characters, but Lorre easily steals the picture as the strange assassin with a morbid sense of humor and indeterminate ethnicity.

One of the more ignored early Hitchcock thrillers, and unjustly so. In 1916 Switzerland, Bookworm John Gielguld, Beautiful Maddeline Carroll and and Pesky, over sexed Peter Lorre are three very unlikely enlisted civilians made to assassinate an unknown foreign agent. One right after another fall superb Hitichcock scenes, high on visuals, in no need of dialog. Such scenes include Gielguld and Lorre discovering a murdered agent in a noisy Swiss church, an assassination seen through a telescope while the victim's dog howls mournfully, a chase through a chocolate factory. What hurts the film is Lorre's shameless overacting, and the too neat ending. It's as if Hitchcock decided "This is beginning to ramble, let's have an explosion here." Don't be put off by co-star Robert Young's comic relief, there's a reason for it. I could picture a 1950's remake, in Vistavision in color with Cary Grant, Grace Kelly and a more restrained Peter Lorre.