Secret Agent

John Gielgud - Edgar Brodie/Richard Ashenden
Peter Lorre - The General
Madeleine Carrol - Elsa Carrington
Robert Young - Robert Marvin
Percy Marmont - Caypor
Florence Kahn - Mrs. Caypor
Charles Carson - 'R'
Lilli Palmer - Lilli
Michael Redgrave - Army Captain

Alfred Hitchcock's reputation as a master of suspense had been long confirmed and for this 1936 production he combined two Somerset Maugham Ashenden adventure stories with a play by Campbell Dixon based on yet other stories from the series. The result was a pastiche of too many plots and subplots presented in helter-skelter fashion. Unlike the American studios, the British did not tamper very much with Hitchcock's product, no matter how good or bad it may have been. Casting was also left open to his needs. His cast was truly all-star, although many of the actors did not achieve full prominence until after Secret Agent was released. Madeleine Carroll, fresh from her satisfying role in The 39 Steps, was opposite John Gielgud. Peter Lorre, Robert Young, Lilli Palmer and Michael Redgrave also joined the action, of which there was more than enough.

Secret Agent concerns Richard Ashenden (John Gielgud), a novelist army hero turned agent, whose assignment is to hunt down and kill a spy. By mistake, he kills an innocent tourist instead. He and his pretended wife, Elsa Carrington (Madeleine Carroll), feel guilty for this dirty work. Their comrade-in-arms, the General (Peter Lorre), takes it all as part of the job but in the end is accidentally shot himself. The chase takes us to Geneva where the spies are headquartered in a chocolate factory. As always, Hitchcock made sure that the ingredients of the action are related to the location where they occur. Typically Swiss associations are welded throughout the picture. At the end, in a tremendous train wreck. the real spy Robert Marvin (Robert Young) is killed. If the scenario itself did not contribute to the credibility of the action, the acting did. Overshadowing everyone's characterisations is that of Peter Lorre, as a Mexican 'general,' with a heart of a butcher, he contributes most of the terrifying qualities to the production. One regrets that Mr. Hitchcock did not throw away the disconnected and annoying romantic passages and give Lorre more to do.

When the film first opened, critics were reportedly disgruntled about the bad soundtrack, but in the end, it was. not the soundtrack that proved to be the failing of Secret Agent, but a lack of heroics on the part of Gielgud. As Hitchcock later reflected, "You can't root for a hero who doesn't want to be one." The actor did a competent job, but it was his characterisation that gave the audience little to identify with. Although the film as a whole does not succeed because of inconsistencies and loose ends, Hitchcock does provide us with some delicious touches that audiences were coming to expect from him. There is the single continued organ note which rings out across a Swiss valley-until it is discovered within the church that a body is slumped across the keyboard. Then too, there is a chase through a Swiss chocolate factory which is being used as cover for spies, and the wailing of a dog that knows its master has been killed. As always, Hitchcock has used his locale to advance the story-line and heighten the impact. For Hitchcock a city is not simply an area for the story to take place: it is an additional character in the drama.
Extract© Richard A. Harris, Michael S. Lasky: The Complete Films of Alfred Hitchcock.