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| Robert
Donat, Madeleine Carroll, Lucie Mannheim, Godfrey Earle, Peggy
Ashcroft |
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Anamorphic
widescreen |
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Dolby Digital
5.1 |
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DTS |
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Trailer(s) |
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Featurette(s) |
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Documentary |
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Audio commentary
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Deleted scenes
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Concept art
/ storyboards |
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Multi-angle
feature |
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Richard Hannay (Robert Donat):
There are twenty million women in this island and I get to be chained
to you.
A Canadian in London tries to help
a counterespionage agent, and soon finds himself in one jam after
another.
 Functioning
as a kind of statement of intent on Hitchcock's part, the director's
first smash hit that established his name internationally carefully
establishes the major themes that would end up dominating his output
for the next forty years. Robert Donat, one of the big movie stars
of the thirties and forties, never returned for another Hitchcock
picture, but his performance as an innocent man who must stay ahead
of both police and criminals while solving the film's mystery would
form a template that survives to this day. Cary Grant and James
Stewart, who would play recurrent similar roles in Hitchcock's later
American films, would both draw heavily on the witty detachment
and ingenuity displayed by Donat in what was arguably his finest
role in what remains one of Hitchcock's finest, most sharply paced
and universally accessible pictures. |
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As a film that has entered the public
domain, there are innumerable cheap releases available both for
Region 1 and Region 2, most of which have neither extras nor acceptable
image quality. The Region 1 release from the Criterion Collection
is available either separately or as part of the five-disc Hitchcock
DVD set 'Wrong Men, Notorious Women'.
Both a movie-only release and a 'Special Edition' (with a modest
featurette on board) are available for Region 2 in the UK, but neither
one measures up to the Criterion release, which served as the basis
for this review.
The fullscreen image is framed
at its original aspect ratio of approx. 1.33:1. The image is slightly
grainy and has a noticeable instances of wear and tear, but is overall
very impressive, boasting deep blacks and excellent, consistent
contrast throughout.
The mono sound mix is a trifle muffled and has rather limited dynamics,
but never more so than one could reasonably expect of a film that
dates back to 1935.
While nog quite as richly packed
with supplements as some other Hitchcock DVD releases from the Criterion
Collection, The 39 Steps still holds a generous selection
of supplements. Film scholar and Criterion regular Marion Keane
contributes an audio commentary that sounds a little
less studied and academic than some of the other tracks she's recorded.
She provides an excellent and highly insightful shot-by-shot analysis
of Hitchcock's framing and how he uses visual style to communicate
his major plot points. But her monotone delivery can make the commentary
a bit of a stretch at times.
The other main addition to the film is the 30-minute documentary
'The Art of Film: Vintage Hitchcock', a
thorough but badly dated episode from a documentary series produced
in the late 1970s. It serves as a competent primer on Hitchcock's
British period, illustrated mainly by generous footage from Young
and Innocent and by rather scholarly comments from the academically
inclined narrator. A regular inclusion on Criterion releases of
Hollywood classics from this period is the Lux Radio Theatre
adaptation, running a little under an hour and illustrated
in this case by still photographs of cast members, etc. Robert Montgomery's
over-the-top delivery in the role of Hannay is a big step down from
Robert Donat's subtle performance, but Ida Lupino does well with
Madeleine Carroll's part, making this bit of media history interesting
to a wider audience than just radio enthusiasts.
The original press book is another interesting
inclusion, featuring the different ad campaigns devised by the film's
UK distributor along with a wide selection of tag lines, and unintentionally
hilarious biographies of main cast and crew members. Pages can be
viewed in full, and most text areas can be viewed in detail as well.
Finally, a small selection of charcoal production designs
rounds out these thorough extras. That
static main menu screen incorporates moments from key scenes nicely
aniamted into the right side of the frame. Navigation is easily
up to Criterion's usual high standards.
Dan
Hassler-Forest
Reviewed:
April 14, 2003
Click
here for IMDB info on The
39 Steps.
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