Secret Agent (1936)

Secret Agent 
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Written by Charles Bennett et al from the novel “Ashenden” by W. Somerset Maugham
1936/UK
Gaumont British Picture Corporation
Repeat viewing

[box] Edgar Brodie: We aren’t hunting a fox, we’re hunting a man. He’s an oldish man, with a wife. Oh, I know it’s war and it’s our job to do it, but that doesn’t prevent it being murder – simple murder![/box]

Peter Lorre makes this early Hitchcock film a ton of fun despite a plot that is even more implausible than usual.

For reasons unknown, a novelist who is serving in the British army in World War I is renamed Richard Ashenden and selected by British Intelligence ito assassinate a German spy in Switzerland.  The identity of the spy is, of course, unknown.  Ashenden (John Gielgud) is given a phony wife, Elsa (Madeleine Carroll), and a crazy double agent called “The General” (Peter Lorre) to assist him.  Elsa is carrying on a flirtation with American Robert Marvin (Robert Young),but is immediately attracted to Ashenden.  Ashenden’s mission is made more difficult by his and Elsa’s distaste for cold-blooded killing, even of an enemy.

Although I have read that Lorre’s addiction made him quite a problem on the set, he still manages to turn in a bravura comic performance.  He is priceless as the randy “hairless Mexican”, so named because he is neither hairless nor Mexican, alternately delivering quips and exuding menace.  Madeleine Carroll is also wonderful.  Gielgud is good but he’s not really romantic lead material.  The story is one big McGuffin crowned by a head-scratcher ending but Hitchcock makes it all go down painlessly.

Clip – opening