Secret Agent
Tags: suspenseful, murder

Plot synopsis:
It is 1916 after the beginning of the First World War, in London. A somber group is filing past a casket surrounded by candles. The butler sees everyone out, locks the door, then takes down the casket, which is empty. Next we are at a British intelligence office in the middle of an air raid, and an officer in uniform comes in, holding a newspaper that seems to announce his own death. The officer, a writer by profession, (John Gielgud), is given false passports with the name Ashenden, introduced to an assistant (Peter Lorre) who goes by the nickname General, and told to proceed in disguise to Switzerland, Hotel Excelsior, and await further instructions. The instructions are to identify a German undercover agent who is at the hotel and about to leave Switzerland for Istanbul, then to prevent the German agent from reaching his destination by any means necessary. In Switzerland we see an old man buy a bar of chocolate, open it, and read a hidden message that a British spy is expected to arrive at the hotel Excelsior. Ashenden checks into the hotel and learns that Mrs. Ashenden (Madeleine Carroll) had arrived the day before. He goes to the rooms reserved for the couple and finds Mrs. Ashenden in conversation with an American, Mr. Marvin (Robert Young), who has been insinuating himself to her. The fake Ashenden couple have their initial conversations to get acquainted, and the General comes in also. Ashenden and the General go to the church to meet the organist, a supposed double agent, to get more information, but they find the organist dead at the organ, with a special type of button in his fist. Back at the hotel they strike up a conversation with a British tourist, they all go to the casino together, and are surprised when the torn button appears to come from the British tourist's coat sleeve, supposedly identifying the tourist as the killer of the organist. The group, including Marvin, have dinner at the same table, and meet the wife of the tourist, who is German and says this trip is the first time she has ever been out of Germany. Ashenden and the General make bets about which of them is a better mountain hiker. They convince the British tourist to go up a nearby mountain the next day, where they plan to murder him. Ashenden has misgivings in participating in a murder, and tries to turn back from the climb, but the General continues up the mountain and pushes the tourist off a cliff. Back at the hotel they receive word that they have identified the wrong man and thus murdered an innocent Briton. This causes consternation and conflict between the Ashendens, he taking the view that he was on an assignment in wartime, she that the murder of an innocent is too high a price to pay even in wartime. This moral conflict is a continuing source of much anguish for both of them, who are otherwise much attracted to each other.Meantime, the General has snooped around and found that the chocolate factory is a center for spy messages, and talks Ashenden into going there to try to get more information from the boyfriend of one of the hotel maids, who has a job at the factory. Mrs. Ashenden decides she wants to resign from her spying assignment and separate herself from her fake husband, and, having no special place to go, she decides to go with Marvin on the next leg of his train trip. At the chocolate factory Ashenden and the General are fingered as British spies and the police is called. They stage an emergency and pull a fire alarm to create chaos, and succeed in evading the police and returning to the hotel, where they find Mrs. Ashenden gone (accompanying Marvin) and also get a coded telegram that identifies Marvin as the agent. They manage to get to the train station, warn Mrs. Ashenden that Marvin is their target, and she agrees to resume her spy duties by pretending to be romantically interested in Marvin. They get on a train that eventually crosses into neutral territory and then into another country at war against Britain. As they confront Marvin in a compartment and he admits being a German agent, British planes attack the train, producing a train wreck. Marvin is mortally wounded, the General is shot dead, and Mr. and Mrs. Ashenden, now in love with each other, are able to return to England without having had to physically murder anyone. A brief epilogue follows, showing the triumph of British forces in the Eastern (Turkish) front.

Review: This movie is also distinguished by large doses of good humor and by some creative uses of the story's setting in Switzerland.John Gielgud plays Ashenden, an English spy in World War I.
There are some excellent scenes, including a scene in an old country church that combines humor and suspense, and a chase through a chocolate factory.Because its hero has a reluctance about his mission that we do not expect in our spy heroes, "Secret Agent" has never been one of Hitchcock's most popular films.
That is the only way I know to absorb the subtle verbal repartees (observe the fascinating expressions and body language of Madeleine Carroll as she repeatedly defends herself from the blandishments of the affable American played by Robert Young); the hilarious malapropisms and convoluted syntax courtesy of the unpredictably eccentric Peter Lorre (there is good reason to believe this was unfeigned because Mr. Lorre, a Hungarian by birth who had achieved a well-deserved reputation as a chilling screen presence in German cinema before leaving for England following the National Socialist take-over, had not yet mastered the nuances of the English language); the classic understatement by that most aristocratic of all British actors, John Gielgud; and for those of us who never tire gazing at the incomparably beautiful Madeleine (Elsa) Carroll, the camera angles finally do justice to her divinely-wrought features (she also delivers her usual elegantly controlled performance).
Despite the abject absurdity of Hitchcock's "Secret Agent", I adored it.The film starts off as a farcical story following John Gielgud and Madeline Carroll - two novice British spies - hunting down a German agent with the help of a more experienced man - "The General" - a Mexican hilariously played by Peter Lorre.
This is generally true of most of Hitchcock's excellent efforts for Gaumont British Pictures of America during the 1930s (I.e. Sabotage, 39 Steps, etc) - very British films made with American/British casts and production for an international audience.Though less suspenseful than many of Hitchcock's contemporaneous efforts, Secret Agent remains a good and entertaining example of Hitchcock in the 1930s..
This espionage film concerns about Ashenden (John Gielgud), a secret agent is sent Switzerland to kill an unknown enemy spy .
There he deals with various characters , as a quirky Mexican general (Peter Lorre), a smart gentleman (Robert Young) and a gorgeous woman (Madeleine Carrol) who poses as his wife , causing the classic loving triangle (Gielgud , Carrol , Young).
This 1936 movie is another in Hitchcock's decade-long run of British talkies: highly-contrasted black and white, under 90 minutes generally, and devoid of major stars (except for Peter Lorre, who appears in this movie two years after he did The Man Who Knew Too Much).But unlike many of the movies surrounding it (Young and Innocent, The 39 Steps), this one isn't quite as good.
A previous commentor was right: This was the movie for Hitchcock to remake in the 1950s (with color and Cary Grant and Grace Kelly - heck, maybe even a minor role for Jimmy Stewart), not The Man Who Knew Too Much, which was one of his best British films.Overall, it is good and worth the watch - especially for Hitchcock fans, but it's just not quite *there*.
They don't repeat characters or plot elements, but they all follow a similar winning formula – not merely that of Hitchcockian suspense (of which there isn't really that much in Secret Agent), but of the notion that scrambling all over Europe bumping off spies and leaping off trains, constantly in fear of your own life, can be made to look rather good fun.First we have the cast and characterisation.
Paired with a bubbly and very believable Madeleine Carroll, and supported by bluff gentleman Percy Marmont, chirpy yank Robert Young and crazy generic foreigner Peter Lorre, the overall feel is like one of those "Brits on holiday" comedies.
He also brings characters in with memorable bits of business to give us strong and meaningful impressions of them – for example Peter Lorre chasing a woman up the stairs or Percy Marmont being introduced when Gielgud trips over his dog.And then there is the director, who is let's face it the only reason anyone pays attention to what would otherwise be obscure English films in the first place.
Later, when Gielgud walks into his hotel room and finds both Carroll and Young inside, there is a quick montage of close-ups as he checks he has the right number, and we essentially ride with his thought process for a few seconds.Secret Agent is by no means as good as The 39 Steps or The Lady Vanishes, not really having any major build-ups of suspense or danger.
With a title like "Secret Agent" and the stamp of Alfred Hitchcock, I'm sure most people are expecting a classic spy thriller with a suave, impeccable hero, a cold-hearted villain and a lot of patriotic drum beating.
The two major problems in this film are John Gielgud, looking distinctly uncomfortable in a dashing leading man role that would have gone down much better with Robert Donat or Laurence Oliver, and Peter Lorre, not able to do much with the grotesque, embarrassing Mexican blackface minstrel routine the film forces on him.
The film's saving graces are Robert Young as Gielgud's unsettlingly suave American rival, and Madeline Carroll, looking and sounding uncannily like Miranda Richardson as perhaps the most uncharacteristically vivacious of Hitchcock's cool blonde heroines..
Adapted from a Somerset Maugham novel, the movie tells the story of a reluctant secret agent (played by John Gielgud), supposedly dead but actually impersonating someone else, and his assignment in Switzerland with his bogus wife (Madeline Carroll), and an assistant called "The Hairless Mexican", who's neither Mexican nor hairless, and who is also known as the "general", though he isn't a general, either.
Long before James Bond hit our screens, Alfred Hitchcock made this Bond type movie and I found Secret Agent quite enjoyable, even though there isn't an awful lot of action in it.A pair of English agents, pretending to be husband and wife are sent to Switzerland to look for a German agent out there.
At the end, the two English agents fall in love for real.Though a little slow moving at times, Secret Agent is quite gripping and has some good scenery thrown in too.The cast includes John Gielgud, Peter Lorre (The Beast With Five Fingers, Mad Love), Madeleine Carroll, Robert Young and Lili Palmer.
In 1916, during the WWI novelist Edgar Brodie, whose death has been faked by the intelligence superiors, is sent to Switzerland where he has to assassinate a German agent.He's given a new name.He's now called Richard Ashenden.He is assisted by a Mexican hired killer that calls himself The General.He has also a woman called Elsa Carrington waiting for him there posing as his wife.And there's also an American charmer named Robert Marvin.Secret Agent (1936) is an early Alfred Hitchcock spy story.John Gielgud does a fine job in the lead.And so does the awfully sweet Madeleine Carroll.There's some chemistry between the leading stars.Robert Young is brilliant.Peter Lorre proves that he's a real chameleon with his curly hair and all.And he also barks like a dog.This may not be the director's finest work but it sure does entertain.In the end we are in a train as in so many other Hitchcock films.This is a suspenseful ride every Hitchcock fan should enjoy..
Somerset Maugham novel in which Maugham relives some of his own experiences as an espionage agent during the first World War. Apparently what I got out of the film is that espionage just ain't a job for amateurs.Maugham's protagonist here is John Gielgud and he's given a wife as part of his cover in the person of the beautiful Madeline Carroll.
Just collateral damage as the officials would say today.Robert Young is also in the film over from America to play a helpful, but wolfish American who Carroll turns to for comfort because she's developed a real distaste for the job she has.I'm betting that Somerset Maugham did in fact find the espionage business distasteful and wrote the same in this novel.
I'll never know, either way, of course.However, to the film: a soldier is pulled from trench warfare in France, given a new identity of Richard Ashenden (Gielgud), a fake wife Elsa Carrington (the delightful Madelaine Carroll) and then teamed up with a clown of a spy called the General (Peter Lorre) to then all travel to Switzerland to kill a German spy.
A film that intimates in several ways the future prowess of the master Hitchcock.He plays with suspense in this, and it has the unusual casting of John Gielgud as Richard Ashenden, in the central role of an ex-pilot now an operative for the government, a stiff performance, for sure, in many scenes he looks extraordinarily uncomfortable with the developing romance between himself and Madeleine Carroll, playing Elsa Carringon a fellow spy, who pretends to be his wife as their 'cover'.Peter Lorre has a supporting role as another operative, and has a ball as a Mexican lover, The General, a stark, rollicking contrast to the stiff Ashenden.
Made during the second half of his British period Alfred Hitchcock's Secret Agent is a spy thriller about a reluctant hero (John Gielgud) during the First World War who botches a hit.
Following two of Hitch's more polished works ( The Man who Knew too Much, The 39 Steps) it fails to live up to their pedigree but does contain more than its fair share of gripping moments.Richard Brodie (Gielgud) Elsa Carrington ( Madeline Carrol) and The General (Peter Lorre) have been assigned by British intelligence to waste a threat in Switzerland.
Brodie, now romantically involved with Elsa wants out but accedes to accompany the General on one more assignment.In the lead Gielgud is somewhat detached and passionless most of the way while Carrol offers some sparks leaving it up to the dark humored, callous Lorre character and the dubious all American Young to keep things interesting while Hitchcock injects some of his suspenseful editorial mastery in a factory, on a train and in particular during an assassination in the mountains.
An early example of this is "Secret Agent."During World War I, a British soldier named Brodie (John Gielgud) famous for his novels finds himself suddenly declared dead by a mysterious figure named R.
Helping Brodie will be another mysterious figure, the "hairless Mexican," played by Peter Lorre at a high histrionic pitch, as well as Elsa (Madeleine Carroll), a naive young spy who pretends to be "Mrs. Ashenden."Right from the beginning, when we watch a one-armed man messily upend a coffin for no apparent reason except to reveal it is empty, "Secret Agent" is aimed more for effect than making sense.
"Secret Agent," on the other hand, is played for a lark, and so when Hitchcock deals his trump, it's a mean trick the film never recovers from.At least the scene makes an impact on screen, more than you can say for John Gielgud, who wears the same air of aristocratic diffidence he did when Dudley Moore told him he wanted a bath some 45 years later.
It might seem to some modern day audiences that this film is ahead of its time (because they probably imagine James Bond and Matt Helm were the first spies in film), but in fact it owes MUCH to Lang's 20s classic "Dr. Mabuse" and others of its ilk.Hitchcock has even imported Lang's best star, Peter Lorre, an actor who can put in a memorable performance even if given no script or direction.
The role of Ashenden in Hitchcock's film is played by the young John Gielgud.
That casting has often been heavily criticised, as Gielgud was rather effete and feeble to play the role of a war hero whose death in combat is faked so that he can be sent under a false name (Ashenden) on a secret mission to assassinate a German spy in Switzerland, before the spy can escape to Constantinople and enemy territory.
But perhaps the weirdest and most effective sequence in the entire film is when Madeleine Carroll is sitting and talking in a hotel room with the dreary, droning wife (a brilliant bit of casting) of a German man who has gone mountain climbing with Lorre and Gielgud, who wrongly suspect him of being a spy and intend to murder him on the mountain.
SECRET AGENT is too slow and unwieldy to be truly enjoyable; it's marred by a lack of action, interesting characters and plotting and it hasn't dated very well over the decades since it was first released.It's the first time I've ever seen John Gielgud as a young man, and I have to say that he doesn't stand out at all.
Lorre is without a doubt the best thing in the movie and he steals every scene he's in.Of course, this is still a Hitchcock film, so there are reasons to watch.
Hitch returns to the Alps again in others of his films, of course.Gielgud is tall, lean and with a clipped dulcet tone and looks the part of a matinée leading man, though Lorre, supposedly the assassin (they're sent to bump off a mysterious German spy) looks like an escaped vaudevillian cabaret artist and armed with an accent that is so thickly mongrel, it's ridiculous.Some peculiar humour, bordering on the inappropriate now, plus these almost sketch-like scenarios, show that Hitch is fighting to direct and control his blossoming flair and imagination - these elements, plus the subject, forms the backbone of many of his future classics.
A small point but shows that the Master is starting his little 'effects' at this time.In the final twenty minutes, the pace picks up and finally, moves on to become the slick spy suspense thriller that it should have been all along - on a moving train - another pretext for things to come.Treat Secret Agent as the film that Hitch did his apprenticeship on and not as a flawed masterpiece, allow for its inconsistencies but relish in the many bits he got right and thank goodness that from here-on in, Hitch was the Master that we all know and love.
Secret Agent was more of a miss.Set in 1916 in the middle First World War. A famous writer/army officer fakes his own death and becomes a spy for the British, Richard Ashenden (John Gielgud).
They is a good action sequence at the end of the film, and because of the time, it forced Hitchcock to use long fix shots, making conversation shots longer, and actually better: more like a play.
RAF pilot Edgar Brodie fakes his death at the height of the Great War (as it was known then) and is recruited as a secret agent and given the identity of Ashenden, for assignment in Switzerland, to search for a spy, with an uncooperative woman pretending to be his wife.His contact in Switzerland, played by Peter Lorre, delivers his verbose lines appropriately stiffly and almost phonetically, especially as he so cheerfully (and repetitively) introduces himself throughout the film, as "General Pompellio Montezuma De La Vilia De Conde De La Rue!" An American tourist turns up along the way, with an admiration for Ashenden's "wife" - or, is there more to him than that?
But, overall, "Secret Agent" is dull and disappointing.***** Secret Agent (5/36) Alfred Hitchcock ~ John Gielgud, Madeleine Carroll, Peter Lorre, Robert Young.
'Secret Agent' is one of two films he released in 1936 (the other being the surprisingly suspenseful 'Sabotage') and it is a worthy effort.John Gielgud plays Edgar Brodie, a young British army officer whose faked death is orchestrated in order to assume a new identity as Richard Ashenden to aid in the assassination of a German spy.
Madeleine Carroll is the young woman masquerading as Mrs. Ashenden, and she is very enthusiastic about her task, and dying to see some "action." Peter Lorre (a favourite actor of mine) plays a fellow British spy known affectionately as The General, who is playful and ardent womanizer, but, at the same time, a cold and ruthless killer when his job calls for it.The acting performances are generally very good.
Some have criticised Lorre for overplaying his role, but I enjoyed his reckless enthusiasm, a side of his character which contrasts starkly with the side he would later reveal.The beginnings of the genius of director Alfred Hitchcock shine through in several parts of the film, most notably the scene involving a hike up the mountain with a suspected German spy, and the howling of the doomed man's dog.
To assist him an eccentric character known only as "The General" (Peter Lorre) is assigned to him.With his new identity, Richard Ashenden, he arrives in Switzerland and learns that as a cover, he has a "wife", Elsa Carrington (Madeleine Carroll).
He must now travel to Switzerland and track down and eliminate a ruthless German agent.'Ashenden' is then teamed with two professional agents, an amoral deadly assassin known as The General (Peter Lorre) and Elsa Carrington, (Madeleine Carroll) a beautiful blonde who will pose as his wife and cover for his new identity.
Joining Ashenden on his dangerous mission is a Mexican assassin known as the General (Peter Lorre) and a female spy called Elsa Carrington (Madeline Carroll) posing as Ashenden's wife.
The cast did a good job with a young John Gielgud putting in a sold performance as Ashenden; Madeleine Carroll was delightful as his 'wife' Elsa...
John Gielgud, Madeleine Carrol, and Peter Lorre are sent to Switzerland to eradicate an unknown German spy who is about to buy Arabia during World War I.
Situated here during the Great War when Ottoman Turkey was on the wrong side, John Gielgud, Madelaine Carroll, Robert Young and Peter Lorre engage in the Grand Game to snag a German spy.