The 1935 film version casts a long shadow, but why should Hitchcock have the field to himself, especially as the source novel is so well known and you could approach the material in an entirely different way? Rank’s team of Betty Box and Ralph Thomas decided to make very much their version – namely, closer to Doctor in the House than Hitchcock’s expressionism. But they pull their punches and copy several sequences wholesale, and the film suffers from comparison.
More’s Hannay is a chirpy fellow who is drawn into the mystery, not through sex appeal, but by trying to be nice to a nanny in Regents Park. Said nanny is run over by a driver, witnessed by More – who finds a gun in her babyless pram, plus a book and theatre tickets. For no really good reason he starts investigating and visits the theatre – where the nanny turns up. So the first bad decision is made – Hannay actively gets involved, whereas normally men on the run do a good deed then get drawn in. Also he’s involved in the government, so knows about the McGuffin (a missile) – which is less fun that someone for whom this is all new.
We have Mr Memory, the nanny goes home with Hannay. Then there’s the second bad decision – the milkman scene. Hannay just tells the milkman he is seeing a married woman straight away. The joke is he tries the spy story, but the milkman doesn’t believe him – so he gives a false story. If you don’t have him trying to spy story, it doesn’t work.
Hannay hops on the train to Scotland. Instead of brassiere salesmen he’s in a cabin with school girls. There’s no building of paranoia but he goes the pash with a beautiful girl (Tania Elg) who tries to turn him in. It was a bit dodgy enough Donat going the pash, but you went with it because he was so dashing – More is like a slightly drunk businessman.
Off the train it departs a little and is a lot better – Sid James is a truck driver who gives him a lift (and seems to have no problem helping a wanted killer – something, incidentally found a lot in the original novel); they run into the farmer and wife…but they play this for comedy. (They’re both eccentric; the wife is an astrologist). And watching this you go “that’s the tone they should have gone for all the way through” – really adapted it for the Rank/More persona. The scene of meeting the head baddie is similar, but they throw in a little kid who is related to the baddie who discovers Hannay in a shed, and the chief baddie is a chirpy bald type, who plays it in a different mode. Also Hannay gets out of strife by pulling a gun. Later on when Hannay has to do a speech its in front of a lot of giggling school girls – another comic opportunity missed.
And the second half of the film it hums along and gets in its stride – you notice less that the pacing is slower and the shot composition less imaginative. This actually means that when Hannay hooks up with the woman and the story slows, you don’t notice it as much as the 35 version.
More and Tania Elg make an alright team – his brash breeziness contrasts well with her shy Germanic school teacher. She’s not as pretty as Madeleine Carroll and he’s not as handsome as Robert Donat – you could imagine these two working it out. And she has great legs for the handcuffs scene. So this copying is OK.
But then it falls over at the end by doing a direct copy of the Mr Memory shooting – and its really obvious Ralph Thomas is no Hitchcock. Why didn’t they try to change it a little? So it’s a frustrating film. Not as bad as you might have heard – not as good as it could have been. Just needed to get outside Hitchcock’s shadow a bit more, have faith in its own talent. The Scottish locations are pleasing, especially in colour.
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