Secret Agent

Directed by England's pudgy master of melodrama, Alfred Hitchcock, Secret Agent is a first-rate sample of his knack of achieving speed by never hurrying, horror by concentrating on the prosaic.

It’s movies like “Secret Agent” that made the director, not the stars, the household name, the “brand” film fans would seek out then and for generations to come.

Secret Agent dallies much on the way but rates as good spy entertainment, suave story telling, and, in one particular case, brilliant characterization.

John Gielgud makes a rare, youthful appearance as an intelligence officer ordered to kill a spy in WWI Switzerland in a fascinating, uneven thriller based on two of Somerset Maugham's Ashenden stories. Madeleine Carroll (a fellow agent pretending to be Ashenden's wife) and Peter Lorre (his flamboyant bisexual assistant) provide excellent support. The striking set pieces include a climactic railway accident. [18 Jul 1999, p.10]

Based loosely on a couple of Somerset Maugham's Ashenden stories, this thriller may not be one of Hitchcock's best English films, but it is full of startling set pieces and quirky characterisation.

It's pleasant to see a story that highlights the pointless absurdity of war and espionage, although some of the jokes are pretty mean-spirited.

It is a defect of the screen narrative that all the spies seem to be continually engaged in melodramatic shadow boxing and that the authors, who couldn't have been Mr. Maugham, never really make out a case for the necessity of spying and never convince you that there is anything in Geneva worth spying on. But there are scattered high-lights.