Classification:

The general concensus for The 39 Steps on its release in the mid-Thirties was that its studio, Gaumont, had a zippy, punchy, romantic melodrama on its hands. Well, yes, but time has showed this film to be much more than that. Indeed, today, it regularly appears in polls for the best 100 films ever made. But why? It creaks like a much-loved antique bedstead; at times its far-fetched and improbable; it doesn't have the complexity of his later work; and the Lucie Mannheim death scene is hilariously over-the-top and hammy.

It works because it has Hitch's fingerprints all over it; the influence of German Expressionism film has been absorbed and made his own; the stars produce great performance, and, most importantly, the entertainment holds like steel cable from start to finish. It is Hitchcock's great masterwork.

Story places a Canadian rancher (Robert Donat) in the centre of an English military secrets plot. He is simultaneously flying from a false accusation of murder and hunting down the leader of the spies, of whom he has learned from a lady (Mannheim) who becomes a corpse early in the story. In the course of his wanderings through Scottish hills and moors, he has a series of spectacular escapes and encounters.

It's a creamy role for the great Donat and his performance, ranging from humour to horror, reveals acting ability behind that good-looking facade. Teamed with the exquisitely beautiful Madeleine Carroll, who enters the footage importantly only toward the latter quarter section of the film, the romance is given a light touch which nicely colours an international spy chase.

One stroke of genius in this movie is this: the stocking scene between Donat and Carroll is one of the most erotic scenes ever seen in a movie. What makes it all the more remarkable is when you consider that it was done within the strict censorship confines of the time. It is part of the story and, as such, is not out of place.

Hitchcock brought out the best in his actors with methods that were unconventional. If the scene in which Donat is handcuffed to Carroll has a certain edge, for instance, that's perhaps because the director mischievously cuffed them together in a rehearsal, then left them attached for a whole afternoon, pretending to have lost the key.

Look out for a very young Peggy Ashcroft playing a crofter's wife and her husband in the movie John Laurie, who doesn't look much younger then than he did in TV's Dad's Army some 35 years later.

Hard to believe but the film was mostly shot in the studio with the Scottish locations a backdrop. You sense Donat & Carroll are wandering through the Scottish highlands rather than through a studio - such is the realness of the piece.

What little that was shot on location were the train escape sequence filmed at the Forth Bridge near Edinburgh in Scotland and scenes at Glen Coe and Rannoch Moor. For a map of locations please click here.

The first scene of the film to be shot was the handcuff escape sequence, where Hannay and Pamela run into the foggy night through a flock of sheep (or "flock of detectives" as Hannay calls them). It was actually fimed in the studio.

Highly recommended and, in the end, just a bloody exciting movie.

And there isn't a better reason than that to see it.