Week 2 The 39 Steps

 “The 39 Steps” is the story of a young Canadian man who, by making an unfortunate mistake of trying to help a young woman in trouble, ends up putting himself in a dilemma. The film starts with Richard Hannay attending a show where Annabella Smith, a female spy on the run, happened to be hiding. The show features an incredible man called Mr. Memory who can recall exact details of any documents. Although at first this factor seemed insignificant as it looked to be simply part of the setting of the story, it is significant as the first foreshadowing scene of the movie (trust Hitchcock to do something like showing a critical scene to the audience at the very beginning of the movie). It turns out that Mr. Memory is a key feature to the plot, holding secrets about The 39 Steps.  This is meant as a twist to surprise the audience.

Aside from this, there is another aspect of the movie that I deemed foreshadowing. Perhaps because I know ahead of time that Hannay will be accused of murder, I found time stamps 7:35 and 9:34 very inauspicious.  The way Hitchcock used lighting from outside the apartment to create lined shadow from the windowpanes gives the impression that Hannay and Annabella will be on the wrong side of the law. This is due to how the line shadows fall upon them as if they were put behind the bars of a jail. By subtly suggesting that these two may be shady characters, the audience would subconsciously cast suspicions on them and look for strange behaviors from at least one of the two. As a result the audience would feel suspense in their anticipation of an upcoming crime event. The typical meaning of light and dark as good and evil is also carried out very subtly here as the main character is repeatedly shown in a dark environments (i.e. the theater where he is in the dark among the audience, the darkness of the night, the darkness of his room upon his entrance) as if to emphasize his doubtful background. Both the plays of lighting on the windows and on the environments are very crucial in building suspicions and suspense on the viewers. The idea of Hannay behind bars is repeatedly suggested in other parts of the story: at 29:40 where the bed is behind a door that resembles a jail door, at 33:17 where he is viewed by the farmer from outside the window, at 34:40 where the camera looked in at him from outside the window, and at 40:01 where he looks out from the window from Jordan’s house.