The Secret Agent (1936)

The Secret Agent (1936)
One of Alfred Hitchcock's finest pre-Hollywood films, the 1936 Secret Agent stars a young John Gielgud as a British spy whose death is faked by his intelligence superiors. Reinvented with another identity and outfitted with a wife (Madeleine Carroll), Gielgud's character is sent on assignment with a cold-blooded accomplice (Peter Lorre) to assassinate a German agent. En route, the counterfeit couple keeps company with an affable American (Robert Young), who turns out to be more than he seems after the wrong man is murdered by Gielgud and Lorre. Dense with interwoven ideas about false names and real identities, about appearances as lies and the brutality of the hidden, and about the complicity of those who watch the anarchy that others do, Secret Agent declared that Alfred Hitchcock was well along the road to mastery as a filmmaker and, more importantly, knew what it was he wanted to say for the rest of his career. The print of the film used in the DVD release is serviceable and probably comparable to an average 16mm classroom or museum presentation. The DVD also includes a Hitchcock filmography, trivia questions, a director biography, and scene access. --Tom Keogh
Customer Review: Secret Agent
Only for fans of Hitch. Very dated for today's audience. Slow pace and confusing character development, especially Peter Lorre's "General". Stiff portrayals and a surprising lack of suspense. Where's a Macguffin when you need one?
Customer Review: Best full length DVD I have found.
This is the best quality DVD I have yet to find of this movie. Still..one night scene on a lake briefly becomes hard to watch. However, the copy is still acceptable in quality until a restored release, if it ever happens, is released. The DVD appears full in length. The movie has all the early Hitchcock touches: the crafted use of sound in pivotal scenes, (as his teacher, Lang, did, most notably in his Testament of Dr. Mabuse), the use of minature models, (which I enjoy, especially when obvious but still well done. It is sooo much better then mismatched stock footage insertions), and the use of excellent and interesting actors. Here we have a young pre-Sir John Guilguld, as well as a young Peter Lorre in his second role for Hitchcock (having just flown in from America after doing the remake of the Hands of Dr. Orlac in Hollywood), to play a cartoon skirt chasing mustachioed Mexican contract killer working for the government character...really. Presumably, this time Lorre understood the actual meaning of his script, (unlike two years earlier in The Man Who Knew Too Much). Dialogue is weak and a major flaw of the movie. A must for both Lorre fans, and Hitchcock fans. I remain, frustrated from waiting for an American DVD copy of Young and Innocent with the full 90 minutes. The American copy had two Una O'Conner scenes removed, for a total of a 1/9th shortening of the movie. There IS a full length version available on an English PAL DVD.