Your favourites from Hitchcock's man on the run set of films?

The 39 Steps
Young and Innocent(I finally got to see this for the first time recently and enjoyed it quite a bit.)
Saboteur
North By Northwest

All of the above films find our leading man wrongly accused of a crime, he ends up going on the run, gets thrown together with a woman who may be a help or hindrance to him and has to try and prove his innocence. Which of them do you like the most?

I've left out The Wrong Man because despite being about an accused man trying to prove himself innocent, Fonda's character doesn't actually go on the run.


The two I love the most are the following.

North By Northwest. Exciting, funny, filled with iconic moments and Cary Grant at his most suave. This film is a perfect mix of all the themes that appear again and again in Hitch's work.

When I first saw this I was very young and noticed the thriller elements more than anything else. Watching it more as I got older, I was struck by the comedy, Cary's drunk impression is priceless and there are so many funny lines.

Saboteur. This one sadly never seems to get the attention it deserves. Featuring what I consider to be the most suspenseful of all Hitch's sequences(the Statue of Liberty finale), the man on the run not knowing who to trust and a slowly developing bond between Robert Cumming's fugitive and Priscilla Lane's woman caught up in the action. Great to see a young Norman Lloyd in this(still with us and now aged 102!)


I really like the other two films.

The 39 Steps. Robert Donat is at his most suave as Robert Hannay, there is a fantastic train escape and a daring(for the time)scene involving stockings.

Young and Innocent sees a wrongly accused man try and hide out in the English countryside. A detectives daughter slowly comes to believe his innocence, but can she help prove it? I love the beach scene at the beginning, two women find the body and as they start to scream we cut to a shot of screeching gulls, great scene. Not all that impressed with Derrick De Marney, but I think Nova Pilbeam is excellent.





Go to bed Frank or this is going to get ugly .