The 39 Steps
Movie: 1935, Black and White, 86 minutes
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Actors: Robert Donat, Madeleine Carroll
The 39 Steps is a film about a man who attends a demonstration that ensues into chaos. He then finds himself holding a woman who persuades him to let her spend the night at his apartment where she informs him that she is a spy being chased. When then woman bursts into his room in the dark of the night stabbed in the back she utters the “39 steps” without any explanation and this becomes his duty to discover the meaning of those words.
Why is the setting, angle and light of certain scenes important as a tool for a foreshadowing effect throughout the film?
In one of the scenes the car that is driving Madeleine Carroll and Robert Donat starts at the beginning of this path that turns into this curvy road that represents the sort of winding way that the two characters will have to go. It’s symbolic for how many obstacles will emerge and how their journey will not be easy. The road is also very foggy signifying a sort of haze, this haze is the mystery of the 39 steps.
How does a certain object play a strong role in the entire film?
Throughout the whole entire film Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll are joined by the wrist by a pair of handcuffs. These handcuffs tie them together and sustain that joint symbol through many impediments along the way. In one scene Madeleine Carroll tries to break them off and later succeeds but once they are no longer on her wrist she feels wrong, the cuffs are a magnet. Without the handcuffs Donat and Carroll would never have come together in the end to piece the puzzle together and figure out what the utterance of the 39 steps means.
