Back by popular demand, the latest in my occasional series of film reviews focuses on one of the master’s British efforts, the distinctly unmasterful Secret Agent, released in 1936.
Johnny Gielgud heads an all-star cast including Madeleine Carroll (tasty), Peter Lorre (imagine Inigo Montoya on speed), and a bloke called Robert Young who I’ve never heard of, though it’s always nice to see a film where the villain is not the twee Englishman (in tweeds with a pipe) but the raunchy Yank.
The first thing to say about this film is that it’s not a patch on The 39 Steps, which was released the previous year. Madeleine Carroll’s character is required to do a transformation from gung-ho Lara Croft type (“Let’s assassinate some spies!”) to self-reflective pacifist (“Oh, the futility of war!”) that is not meant to be funny, but ends up generating far more laughs than Lorre’s ridiculous posturing. One of the main problems is the story: John Buchan’s buccaneering spy novels provide better fodder for the Hitchcock treatment (especially by the time he’s changed them beyond recognition) than W. Somerset Maugham’s (never trust an Englishman who sticks an initial before a county name) dark musings on cuckoldry on the verandahs of Asia. Especially when he transfers them to the trenches of Europe.
The other major problem is Johnny Gielgud, who Hitch wisely dumped after this film. Not only has he a nose big enough to park a double-decker bus under, but he’s not Robert Donat. Whereas, in The 39 Steps, Robert Donat was. Johnny attempts to make up for his deficiencies by chain-smoking his way through the movie. Madeleine takes up the habit, while the German spy/Yank takes things a step further by taking a lit cigarette out of the blonde’s mouth and sticking it in his.
No wonder the canine star of the show, a dachshund whose name I didn’t catch (Colin, perhaps?), tries to claw his way under the double-doors of his swanky Swiss apartment. Hitchcock and co. might not give a monkey’s about exposure to Class A Carcinogens, but this little fellow’s not going to let his chance of a starring role in Lassie Come Home go up in environmental tobacco smoke because a bunch of luvvies are making a bomb.
Not that Johnny isn’t a class act in his own metier, the stage. But his presence in this swashbuckler is about as welcome as Errol Flynn’s in a Pinter play. Which, funnily enough, is where I first saw Johnny: in a Pinter premiere back in 1976. Ralph Richardson was also in this play (at the National Theatre, which should tell you all you need to know about its bankability), and all I can recall is dialogue like this being repeated for two and a half hours:
“Johhny.”
“Yes, Raiph.”
“Seen Harold?”
“I believe he’s with Antonia.”
“Antonia? Again.”
“Yes, Raiph.”
Back to Secret Agent. Inigo Montoya pushes the wrong man down a mountain (thus the seeds are sown for Hitch’s Hollywood classic of the same name with Joseph Cotten), he contracts tinnitus as a result of being silly enough to be in the bell-tower (what’s with Hitchcock and bell-towers, anyway?) when campanology class starts, he has what appears to be an epileptic fit in Madeleine’s smoke-filled bathroom, and he mangles the English language in a way that will surely never be equalled. He also provides the inspiration for a whole host of stage Spaniards down the years, from Sancho Panza through Manuel in Fawlty Towers to the one who has a compulsion to remind us that his father is dead.
A thought for the poor fellow who had to put the English subtitles on the Hong Kong DVD. The sound quality of the print wasn’t much to write home about in the first place, but Lorre’s theatricals made his job well nigh impossible. Still, he tried bloody hard to make sense of what he was hearing, and his renderings threw up some gems:
Original: “Do not insult me please”
Subtitle: “Do not incite the peace”
Original: “I shan’t be more than a few minutes”
Subtitle: “I shunt over it in a few minutes”
But the last word belongs to John Gielgud, whose character has been subjected to that old movie stand-by of having had his obituary posted in The Times. He is talking to R’s sidekick (I kid not, R is the head of MI6, or whatever they had in those days – yes, Ian Fleming plagiarised Maugham), who is trying to recruit him:
R’s sidekick: “Do you love your country?”
Johnny: “Well, I’ve just died for it, haven’t I?”