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Movie Club (Bi-Weekly) - #2 The 39 Steps

MusicEd921

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[font=Raleway, sans-serif]Welcome to MusicEd921's Movie Club![/font]

[font=Raleway, sans-serif]Here's how the movie club will work:[/font]

[font=Raleway, sans-serif]-We will view movies on a bi-weekly basis[/font]
[font=Raleway, sans-serif]-Each month will be a new theme.  This month is Spying on Hitchcock[/font]

[font=Raleway, sans-serif]Now, for our next film viewing.....[/font]

uG5apUkl.jpg



SYNOPSIS: We'll be kicking off our Hitchcock themed month with this 1935 film about a man in London who tries to help a counterespionage agent.  When the agent is killed and the man stands accused, he must go on the run to both save himself and also stop a spy ring which is trying to steal top secret information.   

AVAILABILITY: Currently this film is available for *FREE* to those with an Amazon Prime account.

Anyone interested in viewing has 2 weeks (April 06-April 20).  In that time, please feel free to comment with your thoughts and reviews.  Any MAJOR spoilers, please use the spoiler tags.  Happy viewing!
 

The Scribbling Man

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Been years since I last saw this. Nice to have an excuse to revisit it!
 

Moe_Syzlak

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It’s worth noting that this is currently free to watch on Amazon Prime. If you’re an Amazon Prime member of course.
 

The Scribbling Man

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On that note, are all the titles you've listed available on streaming services, @"musiced921" ? Not an issue if not, just wondering since it was mentioned previously.
 

Moe_Syzlak

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My wife is out of town and this is free on Amazon, so I jumped right in. 

It didn’t quite grab me the way later Hitchcock films do, but it was very good. It may suffer from the fact that it was so influential. I mean you can literally see hundreds of films were directly influenced by this one. Films like the Fugitive, Bourne Identity, Out of Sight, even Hitch’s own North By Northwest spring to mind for me. The political speech scene—my favorite of the movie—also reminded me of Monty Python’s Life of Brian. It was good but done much much better later in North By Northwest.
 

TM2YC

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I've re-watched and reviewed this recently...

https://forums.fanedit.org/showthread.php?tid=12356&pid=300503#pid300503

...so I probably won't watch it again so soon but it's a great movie that everybody should enjoy. Warning! Contains scenes of extreme racy-ness:

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The Scribbling Man said:
On that note, are all the titles you've listed available on streaming services, @"musiced921" ? Not an issue if not, just wondering since it was mentioned previously.

The whole of The 39 Steps can be found on youtube in 1080p. It must have passed YT's copyright bots somehow. Monitised with permission perhaps? Or out of copyright? That's YT's problem to police though.
 

MusicEd921

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The Scribbling Man said:
On that note, are all the titles you've listed available on streaming services, @"musiced921" ? Not an issue if not, just wondering since it was mentioned previously.

Yup!  I made sure that they were available through some streaming source.
 

The Scribbling Man

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musiced921 said:
The Scribbling Man said:
On that note, are all the titles you've listed available on streaming services, @"musiced921" ? Not an issue if not, just wondering since it was mentioned previously.

Yup!  I made sure that they were available through some streaming source.

Cool! :) Would you be able to mention in each film thread which service it's accessible from?
 

MusicEd921

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The Scribbling Man said:
musiced921 said:
The Scribbling Man said:
On that note, are all the titles you've listed available on streaming services, @"musiced921" ? Not an issue if not, just wondering since it was mentioned previously.

Yup!  I made sure that they were available through some streaming source.

Cool! :) Would you be able to mention in each film thread which service it's accessible from?

Will do!  Some of these will need to be a paid rental from a service like Amazon.  I'll mention that as well.
 

Neglify

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I love this film and I'm long overdo for a rewatch. An excellent choice! Adding to my queue.......
 

Sinbad

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I confess to only having seen the1978 Robert Powell version look forward to watching it.  :)
 

TM2YC

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No, only mild sacrilege :D, the Powell version is a classic too. Whatever merits the Hitchcock film has over that version, it can't compete with this Harold Llyod-esque setpiece finale:

600full-the-39-steps-screenshot.jpg


(Image embeds broken again? or it just me?) (Edit: Fixed. Thanks)

Maybe I'll give that a re-watch for comparison instead.
 

Sinbad

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in my defence i saw it first when i was about 10 on tv, and that became the 'definitive' version (Ive put my comment crash helmet on).:) I deserve evetything I get although you have to admit Gus van sant did a far better job of Psycho :D
 

The Scribbling Man

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I've seen both versions, but it's been years, so I can't remember much about either. I remember preferring Hitchcocks version though. Maybe I'll try and watch both this week for comparison - anyone know if the 70's version is streamable anywhere?
 

Moe_Syzlak

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The Scribbling Man said:
I've seen both versions, but it's been years, so I can't remember much about either. I remember preferring Hitchcocks version though. Maybe I'll try and watch both this week for comparison - anyone know if the 70's version is streamable anywhere?


I assume this is okay to post. If not, feel free to remove.
 

The Scribbling Man

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Planning to watch this this evening. Depending on time and mood, I may try and do a double-bill and check out the 70's rendition as well.
 

The Scribbling Man

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Thanks for picking this, @"musiced921" - truly this was a trip down memory lane. So many years since I've seen this, and I honestly didn't think I would remember it,
but then the moment the woman collapsed on the bed, knife in back, the memories came flooding - from the iconic transition of the train masking the woman's scream, to the man with half a finger.

I must say, as the film started I found it hard to settle in. The picture quality was good, but the audio still suffered from being an old film, making it hard to hear some of the dialogue.
The muffled "bang"'s at the beginning were so soft that I honestly didn't pick up that they were meant to be gunshots.
Generally, I found the whole setup to be a bit sloppy - the brawl at the start is very contrived, coming almost out of nowhere, and the main character seems a little cheery considering he's just come out of a violent situation where shots have been fired. He's also far too accommodating to the mysterious woman that he agrees to take home.
But the glaring hole that really bugged me from the start was "why didn't they just kill him when they killed the woman?". And to a much, much lesser extent, there is no way on earth that the milkman would have been that agreeable in parting with his uniform.

Despite a mixed start, I loved the rest of the film all the way to the end. It's wonderfully shot and performed, with a bizarrely perfect balance of comedy and thriller. The plot is not the strongest element, but it does the job and the film entertains regardless. The political rally was a highlight for me, conjuring up thoughts of the equally amusing and very similar scenario in Graham Greene's novel "The Third Man" (I've seen the film, but I'm less familiar with it), in which the main character is forced to lead a Q&A after being mistaken for a highly regarded author, himself merely being a serial writer of "trashy" western paperbacks. Much like our protagonist in "The 39 Steps", he also is on the run from thugs.

Many old films have a habit of ending abruptly, and therefore rushing the climax. The 39 Steps does not fall into this category. Things are wrapped up quickly, but they are wrapped up well.
The closing words of Mr Memory are nicely delivered as the music plays and dancers dance in the background. The camera slowly pans back to reveal the ironically voluntary hand-holding of a man and woman who, 20 minutes prior, were cuffed together against their will.

We were not provided with a drink pairing suggestion this time, but I chose to watch the film while drinking a Brouwerij De Molen "Hel & Verdoemenis" (Imperial Stout), which, much like the film, was bloody good.

"Am I right, sir?"
"Quite right, old chap."
"Thank you, sir. Thank you... I'm glad it's off me mind... at last."
 

The Scribbling Man

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So I guess everyone is watching this today...? 

*cough* deadline *cough*
 
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