This is a good film, bringing up to date the previous Robert Donat version. Kenneth More, who seemed to appear in every British film I watched in the 1950s, is excellent as Richard Hannay. What I like about this film is the interlacing of humour as well as the sinister threatening of the enemy. The fact that we are never really told who the "enemy" is adds to the tension and the mystery, but the real strength lies in the humour - the impersonation of the whistling milk man, the handcuffing together of Hannay and Fisher, and the way that the landlady identifies with the "runaway couple" reminding "McDougal" of their own courting days. The climax in the theatre is a little unbelievable with the audience watching dancing girls minutes after the Memory Man has been shot, for example, and we are not told how Hannay and Fisher managed to get from Perthshire to London with every policeman in Great Britain after them! The authentic Scottish scenery, especially Waverley Station and the Forth Bridge, adds to the film. I first saw this film in about 1960; I have seen it about a dozen times since, and I keep enjoying it!

Kenneth More plays Richard Hannay, the victim of circumstances who finds himself inheriting the job of solving a crime whilst being its chief suspect.Our Ken is a solid, reliable actor who brings a lighthearted touch to most every role he plays. Basically a decent British bod, whether sweating it on the 'Northwest Frontier' or shivering on the Titanic; I don't think he's ever played a baddie. This 1959 version is one of several that includes an earlier, and arguably superior, Hitchcock release. As a More fan, I prefer this one. But that's only my bias talking. Here, he does just look a wee bit bored at times. It's not particularly violent, easy on the drama, with no sex to speak of. There's nice location-work in London and Scotland, good photography, steady editing and adequate sound. Although filmed in colour, most of the time it looks like a deeply-sepia'd black & white. You might need to adjust your settings.Well worth a matinée punt if you're off sick, skiving or unemployed.

Since Alfred Hitchcock's well-known version from 1935, there have been two further adaptations of John Buchan's "The 39 Steps". The 1978 version with Robert Powell kept the pre-World War I setting and was much more faithful to Buchan's plot than Hitchcock had been. The 1959 version, however, was a remake of Hitchcock's film, keeping much of the plot, and even some of the dialogue, of his version. (It came out in the same year as "North by Northwest", which can be seen as Hitchcock's own unacknowledged remake of his own film).Just as Hitchcock updated the story to the thirties, so this one updates it to the fifties. Modern audiences tend to assume that the villains in the Hitchcock film are agents of Nazi Germany, although this is never made explicit and for thirties audiences Stalin's Russia might have suggested itself as an alternative possibility. In the 1959 film, made during the Cold War, there is little doubt that the villains are working for the Soviet Union, although again this is never explicitly stated.In this version the hero, Richard Hannay, is not a Canadian (as he was in Hitchcock's film) but an Englishman, recently returned from working in the Middle East. (In Buchan's novel he was a Scot who had worked in South Africa). He meets by chance a woman who reveals to him that she is a spy, working for British Intelligence, and has uncovered a plot by a mysterious organisation known as "The Thirty Nine Steps" to steal the top-secret plans for a new British ballistic missile. (In Hitchcock's version the secret information related to a new aircraft engine). She tells Hannay that she must leave for Scotland immediately, but while he is out of the room, she is killed by two hit men. Fearing he will be accused of her murder, he decides to continue her mission and catches a train to Scotland. The plot continues along much the same lines as Hitchcock's, although there are a few changes. The heroine whom Hannay meets on the train is, for example, a sports teacher at a girls' public school. There are also some added scenes, such as the one where Hannay stays at an inn whose landlady turns out to be a spiritualist medium.Hitchcock's film was a comedy-thriller which combined suspense with humour, and the remake was intended in the same vein. Ralph Thomas was known as a director of both comedies (such as the "Doctor" films) and thrillers (such as "The Clouded Yellow") so he doubtless seemed the right man for the job. Compared to the original, however, this film is a pedestrian affair. To be fair to Thomas, part of the blame lies with the actors. Kenneth More plays Hannay as the sort of decent, middle-class stiff-upper-lipped English gentleman which had become his stock-in-trade, a characterisation which seems stolid and uninteresting next to the panache of Robert Donat's dashing action hero. The casting of the Finnish actress Taina Elg as Miss Fisher was an unsuccessful attempt to inject some Continental glamour into the film. Elg always comes across as dull and unglamorous, especially when compared to Madeleine Carroll who played the equivalent role in the Hitchcock film, and her foreign accent makes it difficult to accept her as a British schoolmistress.Some of the blame for the film's comparative failure, however, must lie with the director and scriptwriters. Some of the scenes, such as Hannay's escape on the Forth railway bridge, are indeed better done here than they were in the original, which is perhaps not surprising given that Thomas evidently had more financial resources available to him than did Hitchcock. The film as a whole, however, lacks the sense of movement and excitement which characterised Hitchcock's. The attempts at humour generally fall flat. The scene with the milkman is mishandled; in the original the humour arises from the fact that the milkman refuses to believe the truth but readily believes Hannay's false story about being a lover escaping from a jealous husband. In the remake Hannay simply comes out with the invented story without any attempt to tell the true one. The other comic high point of Hitchcock's film, the scene at the political meeting, here becomes an attempt to give a lecture to the assembled schoolgirls, and loses much of its point.This is not a particularly bad film, and is certainly not the worst Hitchcock remake. (That dubious distinction must belong to Gus van Sant's horrible version of "Psycho"). Nevertheless, the filmmakers seem to have failed to realise that trying to improve on Hitchcock's version was a vain endeavour. Had they wanted to make a new version of "The 39 Steps" they should have gone back to Buchan, as the makers of the 1978 film did. 5/10

I can't remember much of the original film version of THE 39 STEPS but seeing this remake a couple of days ago I got the distinct feeling that it's rather inferior to the Hitchcock version . Much of the problem lies with the director Ralph Thomas who has a long and successful track record of making comedies and he seems unsuited for thrillers , everything seems a little too lightweight here and it's not helped by the cheery and jovial musical score or indeed Sid James playing a straight role as a lorry driver . It should also be pointed out that while Kenneth More plays an affable type of hero in Richard Hannay he lacks the dashing charm of Robert Donat in the original and is probably less effective than the slightly angry young man of Robert Powell in the latter 70s remake . More's Richard Hannay would probably have appeared too much of an old fashioned hero in 1959 to be taken entirely serious . He's by no means bad but remember DR NO was just around the corner and that movie turned the world upside down as to what made a cinematic hero . That's the problem , everything is too old fashioned from the polite tea parties to actresses in their late 20s/early 30s playing schoolgirls There is another problem and that's the screenplay sticks to closely to the tone of the original . I dispute what it says in the IMDb trivia section about this movie being a shot for shot remake of the original Hitchcock version but it totally lacks an updated feel . War clouds were approaching when THE 39 STEPS was made in 1935 while the 1970s version used the approaching great war as its backdrop but does THE THIRTY NINE STEPS of 1959 feel like the West is engaged on a cold war crusade against communism ? There seems to be little sense of a political time and place with the bad guys coming across more of a criminal gang than traitors to the country . Unless I'm mistaken I don't think the word " Communism " features onceA very disappointing remake . I recommend the original or the 1978 version