Secret Agent (1936)

Film: Secret Agent (1936)

Stars: John Gielgud, Peter Lorre, Madeleine Carroll, Robert Young

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Madeleine Carroll-click here to learn more about Ms. Carroll (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Madeleine Carroll is one of the least known (if not truly the least known) of the women we're going to profile this year for our third season of Saturdays with the Stars.  But she holds a distinction shared by just a handful of these women, and that is that she actually starred in two Alfred Hitchcock films.  Last week we talked about her complicated relationship with Hitchcock (at one point he put handcuffs on her that literally resulted in her getting welts on her wrists in The 39 Steps), but it's undeniable that that film made her a star, and it made sense (by 1930's logic) for her to reunite quickly after with Hitchcock and her leading man Robert Donat in another thriller (if it ain't broke...).  Unfortunately, Donat wasn't well at the time (he suffered from severe asthma that inhibited his leading man potential), and so with Secret Agent we got Hitch, Madeleine, and John Gielgud, an unlikely (and ill-suited) replacement for Donat in our second Hitchcock film this month.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film follows Edgar Brodie (Gielgud), a member of the British army, who has been pronounced dead in the newspapers by mistake, and therefore is the perfect person to undertake a spy mission.  He is hired by a man named "R" who wants him to find a German agent who is working against British interests in the Middle East.  He is partnered with the "General" (Lorre), who is not a general but is a hired killer, and a heartless, eccentric one at that.  Brodie, now under the guise of "Ashenden" is also assigned a wife named Elsa (Carroll), who despises him at first (or so it seems), and is interested in this caper due to the thrill of it, not realizing that it comes with a cost; she spends much of her time, despite being "married" to Ashenden flirting with playboy Marvin (Young), who doesn't seem to mind that the women he's chasing has a husband.  Ashenden & the General initially think a mountaineer is the spy, killing him in a harrowing scene atop a mountain, but then they learn he isn't the spy (which causes Elsa to be despondent over her involvement in killing an innocent man).  We finally learn, after she leaves, that Marvin is the secret agent, and aboard a train there is a standoff between the four, with both Marvin & the General killed, and Ashenden & Elsa, now in love, quitting the espionage business and instead pursuing a real marriage.

The movie is conventional.  While modern audiences will initially wonder if Lorre is the double agent due to his long history of playing double-crossers, it's pretty apparent as the movie goes that it'll be Young (otherwise why is he there?).  Secret Agent was not as well-received as The 39 Steps, and it's not difficult to understand why.  The twists are routine, and while the camerawork is inventive (particularly the murder of the mountaineer, and a strange crime scene involving an organist), that doesn't solve the biggest problem in the movie-the casting of Gielgud.

Gielgud apparently disliked this film, thinking that Robert Young got the better part of the two men, and while he's wrong (Peter Lorre is the only person giving a great performance here, and completely steals the picture), he is correct that he was a horrible fit for this.  Hitchcock's leading men need to be everyday guys stuck in extraordinary circumstances, and while Gielgud was a fine actor, he was not great at playing an "average chap."  His chemistry with Carroll isn't as good as hers with Donat, as both feel stilted & she gets on much better with Young (who of the two actors in general I'd never prefer, but is better here even if he's nowhere near as good as Lorre).  As a result, Secret Agent is a miss, and it's easy to see why Carroll never worked with Hitchcock again.  Next week, we're going to move away from Madeleine's relationship with Hitchcock, and watch what happens as she takes full advantage of her new stardom in America.