Secret Agent is filmed version of a W. Somerset Maugham novel in which Maugham relives some of his own experiences as an espionage agent during the first World War. Apparently what I got out of the film is that espionage just ain't a job for amateurs.
Maugham's protagonist here is John Gielgud and he's given a wife as part of his cover in the person of the beautiful Madeline Carroll. He's also got another companion in the person of a cheerful little assassin played by Peter Lorre. He easily steals the film from everyone involved.
Seen today, the special effects are themselves kind of amateurish with those model trains used. Of course Hollywood wasn't above doing the same thing in their B productions, but this was an A product for the British film industry by its most acclaimed director, Alfred Hitchcock.
Gielgud's supposed to investigate and finger an enemy agent who absolutely must be eliminated for reasons that are never really made clear in the film. Lorre's the professional here, maybe a little too professional when Gielgud fingers the wrong guy at first. Never mind, figures Lorre, we'll get the right one this time. Just collateral damage as the officials would say today.
Robert Young is also in the film over from America to play a helpful, but wolfish American who Carroll turns to for comfort because she's developed a real distaste for the job she has.
I'm betting that Somerset Maugham did in fact find the espionage business distasteful and wrote the same in this novel. But in this Hitchcock misfire, the only lesson I got from it was that espionage is best left to the professionals.
Maugham's protagonist here is John Gielgud and he's given a wife as part of his cover in the person of the beautiful Madeline Carroll. He's also got another companion in the person of a cheerful little assassin played by Peter Lorre. He easily steals the film from everyone involved.
Seen today, the special effects are themselves kind of amateurish with those model trains used. Of course Hollywood wasn't above doing the same thing in their B productions, but this was an A product for the British film industry by its most acclaimed director, Alfred Hitchcock.
Gielgud's supposed to investigate and finger an enemy agent who absolutely must be eliminated for reasons that are never really made clear in the film. Lorre's the professional here, maybe a little too professional when Gielgud fingers the wrong guy at first. Never mind, figures Lorre, we'll get the right one this time. Just collateral damage as the officials would say today.
Robert Young is also in the film over from America to play a helpful, but wolfish American who Carroll turns to for comfort because she's developed a real distaste for the job she has.
I'm betting that Somerset Maugham did in fact find the espionage business distasteful and wrote the same in this novel. But in this Hitchcock misfire, the only lesson I got from it was that espionage is best left to the professionals.