Though definitely one of the better films of Hitchcock's British Primitive period, it's still hard to see the hand of the master craftsman who would make "Rebecca" in this interesting but clumsy spy melodrama. 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.
Review of Secret Agent
