Wonderful thriller that looks even better over the years. Michael Redgrave and Margaret Lockwood aren’t among Hitchcock’s better known pair of stars, but they work marvellously in a jolly-good-chaps 1930s kind of way. He has a good natured, wet, intellectual quality which is perfect for the part (Robert Donat in 39 Steps mode would have been too dashing – although not Donat in Goodbye Mr Chips mode, if that makes sense). Lockwood is terrific fun and they make a spirited, youthful couple – you can imagine them spending their honeymoon hiking in the Cotswolds or something.The piece glories in its Englishness – you’ve got cheery sensible Lockwood, slightly eccentric Redgrave, glorious Dame May Whitty having a ball as a very useful senior citizen, adulterous Cecil Parker and his stressed out partner, the magnificent Basil Radford and Nauton Wayne, the very likeable cockney nun in high heels who works for the baddies until she realises they’re trying to kill an English lady. (It’s not all rah-rah Royal Britannia, though – it makes fun of British hypocrisy and the slipperiness of their foreign office.)
An extremely well acted movie – so many of the roles were open to caricature but the actors don’t take that option (well, not all of them – the suave European types do their European thing). It helps that this is more of an ensemble piece than a star vehicle; most of the Brits get a chance to shine, even at the end.
Many wonderful moments: the nun wearing high heels; Dame May Whitty making a dash for it across the forest as people try to shoot her; pretty much everything Radford or Wayne say (eg “I say you can’t go about tying up nuns”); Redgrave’s “I went to Cambridge line”; the realisation only the British passengers are left on the train because it’s tea time. I love it.
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