the audience applauded

Good concept, poorly executed.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

'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.

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.

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? With so much mistaken identity and staged deaths and lies spiraling around, who's to know for certain, until the final scene? Less suspense than some of Hitchcock's other efforts, (perhaps that is why it is less well known?) but still a lot of fun to watch. One of my favourites of Hitchcock's, especially of his earlier work.A dog makes another appearance, repeating a trend Hitchcock began in The Pleasure Garden, which was repeated at least until Rear Window.If James Bond had been around in the 1930s, this is what he would have been like. There are striking similarities to Ian Fleming's original novel Casino Royale; this WWI-era spy thriller/ romance/ comedy is one of my favourite of Hitchcock's.

***SPOILERS*** Having been reported killed in the fighting on the western front British Army officer Edger Brodie, John Gielgud, is brought back to life not by a Doctor Frankenstein but by the top British intelligence officer known only as "N" played by Charles Carson.Given a new identity as Richard Ashenden Brodie is told to travel to neutral Switzerland and with the help of his fellow British Agents The General, Peter Lorre, and his now new wife Elsa Carrington, Medeleine Carroll, to assassinate a German undercover agent. The German Secret Agent is trying to start up trouble in the Middle-East against the British troops fighting the Turks, Germany's ally, in Palestine.In Switzerland both Asherden and the General contact the third member of the British assassination team Elas Carrington who's masquerading around as Mrs. Asherden. To both Asherden and the Generals surprise Elsa is having an affair with this American tourist playboy Robert Marvin, Robert Young, which greatly complicates matters. Not only don't Asherden and the General know who this German Secret Agent is but their fellow British Agent Elsa is now, by being in love with Marvin, not at all interested in finding and terminating him!The attempt in tracking down and offing the shadowy German Agent falls completely apart when British mountain climbing tourist Caypor, Prcy Marmont, is mistaken for him and murdered by the General pushing Caypor off a snowy cliff in the Alps. This has both Asherden and his "wife" Elsa totally lose interest in finding and killing the German Agent even if letting him stay alive and get to German's ally Turkey, with his secret plans or a full scale Arab revolt, will cost thousand of British lives! That's by causing the neutral, at the time, Arabs to rise up against the British in Palestine in support of the Turks and Germans.***SPOILERS*** Very contrive and unbelievable ending with the RAF, if that's what it was called back then in WWI, doing the job that both Ashenden and Elsa didn't have the heart to do. As for the General he did the best he could to knock off the German Agent but his best wasn't good enough. It's later that both Ashenden and Elsa did in fact tie the knot after all this, spying running shooting and killing, was over and quit the British Secret Service finding that they just weren't quite cut out, in the assassination business, for it.