Posted on 03/02/2024 4:32:08 PM PST by Twotone
When the poet W.H. Auden called the years leading up to World War Two "a low dishonest decade" in his poem "September 1, 1939", you have to wonder if this was simply a case of perfect hindsight. Were sensible people really living for years with the near certainty that another war was on its way? If so, it must have been intolerable; if not, it would explain a lot.
Proof of this dismal mood is actually abundant even in entertainment – like Alfred Hitchcock's 1935 thriller The 39 Steps, one of the director's earliest and greatest successes. It's the story of a man who accidentally stumbles onto proof that a foreign power is actively conspiring to gain advantages in peacetime that will benefit it immensely with the coming of war – a war that it's intent on winning.
Screenwriter Robert Towne famously said that "all contemporary escapist entertainment begins with The 39 Steps." It's certainly true that every movie or TV show about a hero pursued all over the map by implacable enemies had its form codified by Hitchcock while he was still a British director, a few years from moving to Hollywood. But you have to wonder – just how "escapist" is a film predicated on the audience accepting that war was on its way, sooner or later?
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
I thought the book was better. Welcome to FR, by the way.
Godfrey Tearle with the missing digit bore an interesting resemblance to FDR.
Was there a good side on 39 Steps? Is there one today?
Library book sales, yard sales, used-book stores, Goodwill, I’d check them all out regularly. It was more of a thrill finding a book I’d been looking for than it is now, when you can find just about any book online.
“Time enough at last!” Poor Henry Bemis.
I realized a few years ago that I won’t live long enough to read everything I want to, to say nothing of rereading old favorites.
An organization of spies. Also the number of increments from the street to my front door.
The book that the movie was based on was part of a trilogy. It came out in 1916, with Greenmantle bringing in the Turks in in 1916 and Mr. Standfast set during World War I but not coming out until 1919. The author, John Buchan, later served as Governor General of Canada, a post he held in 1939 when the movie came out.
The 1959 movie version of The 39 Steps is quite entertaining and available for free on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqhveBydaA0
The 1935 classic version is also available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmSdum4BMqI
Riddle of the Sands is another spy thriller. The BBC audio drama of that is available on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDjGtQCg5AQ
Ironically, the author, Erskine Childers was executed by the British in 1916 after the Easter Rebellion. I say ironically because Childers was English born, served in the British military and the novel he published in 1903 was very much about defending Britain.
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