kkonrad-29861 'Secret Agent' is probably Hitchcock's most underrated film. It sets nice atmosphere, it is fairly thrilling and it is entertaining. The ending might be abrupt and unsatisfactory, but in general, it is good movie. The hero (John Gielgud) being little bit reluctant towards his mission, while allowing his sidekick to perform most of the heroics, is nice touch. Madeleine Carroll is sweet as Elsa Carrington, a female spy, and like usually in Hitchcock's movies, she is not just token woman for eyecandy. Robert Young is quite typical suave British playboy who can't stop flirting with gorgeous Elsa. John Gielgud is charming as British spies always. Some call his performance bit wooden, but I saw it part of the character's unwillingness to complete his mission. And then there was Peter Lorre's over the top General. It was very stereotypical portrayal of Mexican, but, oh boy how he must had fun.Some of the most fantastic moments were where the director played with the sound, like the scene in the bell tower when Ashenden and The General whispered into each other's ears. Besides the humor and fantastic 'cloak and dagger' games, Hitchcock managed to create one perfectly eerie moment with the dog in the hotel room. What a way to warn the viewer that something awful is about to happen. All in all, very good spy thriller, plus, how many times you can see the German actor portraying Mexican in British film. Oh the good old times.

russellalancampbell I found the film is a bit uneven but worth watching for at least four reasons. One of them is the performance of Madeleine Carroll who is perhaps the best of all the Hitchcock blondes. She was stunningly beautiful and a supremely talented actress. Her performance stands the test of time and of changing screen acting techniques. Carroll as Elsa is called upon to run a great range of emotions and never misses a beat. Her face is surely one of the most beautifully expressive faces in screen history.Peter Lorre is always worth watching. He is at once comical and cunning. He can be obsequious and yet ready to take the offensive the moment the opportunity arises.The third thing that strikes me in this film is how uninteresting John Gielgud was as a younger man. His face was rather non-descript and he had not developed the distinctively deep, resonant tone that was Gielgud's trademark. I know that he is playing the part of a relatively young man and not an old, wise professor but his lack of diction makes some of his lines completely lacking in emotion and is sometimes difficult to understand. Age certainly improved Gielgud as a screen presence.Robert Young's scenes with Madeleine Carroll are the highlight of the film. Witty, sophisticated dialogue and great charm. Both know what the other is thinking as they playfully counter each others moves.

Leofwine_draca Not one of Hitchcock's best films. 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. Perhaps he got better with age? Whatever the reason, he just doesn't possess any gravitas or charisma as this film's hero. The brunt of the acting work is left to Peter Lorre, who plays an exuberant supporting character. 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. The direction's not half bad, it's just the storyline that fails to impress. You never get any of the pervading menace or sense of impending doom from later thrillers like FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT. There are some stand-out sequences (I absolutely love the bit with the organist) but as a whole this is a letdown.

Tim Kidner In my review of the box-set that contains this 1936 spy suspenser from the Master, 'The Hitchcock Collection', I said that I'd award four stars for it. Reckoning I should at least see it again (I'd only seen it on TV before) I now wonder if four is too generous.Firstly, the picture quality is next to abysmal, almost unwatchable at times, the soft, flickering, with scratches and white marks and then there's the odd and difficult to follow plot. We see our three protagonists - a young, (with hair!) John Gielgud, Madeleine Carrol and a most peculiar Peter Lorre, talking, then they're mysteriously in WW1 Europe, shacked up in an alpine hotel. 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. There's a scene where a button gets circling round the edge of a bowl, in a sort of roulette wheel effect; Hitch superimposes what (if I recall correctly) what Peter Lorre sees, a bigger, brighter but static button. 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. My score is nearer 6.5 than 7/10, however, as it looks really quite dated now.