Secret Agent (1936 film)

Infobox_Film
name = Secret Agent

|image_size=175px
caption= original film poster
director = Alfred Hitchcock
producer = Michael Balcon
Ivor Montagu
writer = W. Somerset Maugham (novel)
Alma Reville (screenplay)
starring = John Gielgud
Peter Lorre
Madeleine Carroll
Robert Young
cinematography = Bernard Knowles
editing = Charles Fren
released = May 1936 (U.K.)
June 15, 1936 (U.S.)
runtime = 86 min
country = UK
language = English
imdb_id = 0028231

"Secret Agent" is a 1936 British film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, based on a by W. Somerset Maugham. The film starred John Gielgud, Peter Lorre, Madeleine Carroll and Robert Young. Future star Michael Redgrave made a brief, uncredited appearance.

Plot

Gielgud plays a British officer, a once famous writer who fakes his death during World War I, and is sent by the mysterious "R", head of British intelligence, to Switzerland on a secret mission. Meanwhile, Carroll plays a female agent who poses as his wife. Together, they meet their contact in the country, Lorre.

Typical Hitchcockian themes used here include mistaken identity and murder. The film is notable for calling the hero's superior by a single letter, an idea which writer Ian Fleming would use in his James Bond stories.

External links

*
* [http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-1536982308887890655&q=Maugham&total=59&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=3 View online]
* Elisabeth Weis, 1982, "The Silent Scream - Alfred Hitchcock's Sound Track" (1982), [http://www.zx.nu/ss/chapter3.htm "Expressionism at its Height: "Secret Agent"] , a discussion of Hitchcoock's use of sound in the film.
* Movie Diva, [http://www.moviediva.com/MD_root/reviewpages/MDSecretAgent.htm 2001 review]
* [http://www.eyegate.com/cine/Secret_Agent/ "Secret Agent" Eyegate Gallery]