The Thirty Nine Steps (1978 film)

The Thirty Nine Steps is a British 1978 thriller film directed by Don Sharp, with screenplay by British playwright Michael Robson, based on the novel The Thirty Nine Steps by John Buchan. It was the third film version of the 1915 novel. This version of Buchan's tale starred Robert Powell as Richard Hannay, Karen Dotrice as Alex, John Mills as Colonel Scudder, and a host of other well known British actors in smaller parts. It is generally regarded as the closest to the novel, being set before the Great War. The early events and overall feel of the film bear much resemblance to Buchan's original story, albeit with a few changes such as the re casting of Scudder as a more immediately sympathetic character and the introduction of a love interest. It also introduces a different meaning for the "thirty nine steps", although unlike its filmed predecessors it returns to Buchan's original notion of being an actual staircase. It is known for the Big Ben sequence near the end, inspired by the film My Learned Friend (1943) starring Will Hay, although this is its most fundamental deviation from Buchan's original story, which reaches its culmination in a coastal location in Kent. Powell later reprised the role in the ITV series Hannay which ran for 13 episodes from 1988 to 1989.

In 1914, Imperial German spies are everywhere in London. After a spate of mysterious assassinations of important British politicians, a retired British Intelligence officer, Colonel Scudder, realises his life and his mysterious black notebook are in danger. He turns to Richard Hannay, a mining engineer who is visiting Great Britain for a short time before returning to the Union of South Africa, who happens to be staying in a flat in the same building. Scudder tells Hannay of a plot by Prussian (German) 'sleeper' agents, who are planning to precipitate a world war against the Triple Entente alliance (future Allied powers) by assassinating the Royal Greek prime minister while visiting the U. K

Hannay reluctantly gives Scudder shelter in his flat, despite his initial distrust of him. In the morning, Hannay leaves to purchase a train ticket to his family hometown, the village of Strathallan north in Scotland, while Scudder remains at work on his notes in the flat. When the Prussian agents attempt to enter the flat, Scudder flees down the fire escape but he is spotted. Posting a package containing his secret notebook in a pillar box, Scudder flees to the St Pancras railway station, where he knows Hannay will be, to give him a second black book. At the railway station, just seconds before he can reach Hannay, Scudder is murdered by the agents. With his dying breath he gives Hannay a message he doesn't quite understand. Unfortunately however, Hannay is mistaken by witnesses at the railway station as being the assailant and is arrested but is soon captured by the Prussians while being transferred in loose security to jail. During their interrogation of Hannay, they ask what he knows of the "Thirty Nine Steps". The Prussians allow him to get away and escape in the hope he will later lead them to the secret notebook. At St Pancras, Hannay manages to find Scudder's second notebook, but this turns out to be a dummy, with only a three word riddle in it. Only Hannay can understand the riddle, which sends him up to Scotland to find the real notebook. Hannay flees to Scotland on a northbound train, but he is forced to make a daredevil escape jumping on a bridge when the police board the railway cars. Hannay attempts to solve the mystery whilst on the run from the police "bobbies", led by Chief Superintendent Lomas (Eric Porter), and the Prussian agents, led by Sir Edmund Appleton, a Prussian sympathiser highly placed in the British Royal government. On the Scottish moors Hannay, claiming to be on the run as part of a wager, meets Alex Mackenzie and her fiance, David Hamilton. On the run again, Hannay has to pose as a Liberal Party political orator and ad lib a speech at an election husting campaign stop. He indicates the identity of the Prussian agents to Alex Mackenzie and David Hamilton and with their help Scudder's book is found, but Hamilton is then killed by the Prussians. The coded information is partly deciphered and the true plans of the Prussian agents are revealed. The agents intend to murder the visiting Royal Greek Prime Minister by planting a bomb in the Palace of Westminster, while the British Parliament is meeting thus also causing a criminal terrorist incident, leading to unrest in the always unstable Balkans peninsula (southeastern Europe) and precipitate an international crisis, possibly striking a world war. The "Thirty Nine Steps" refers to the number of stairs in the landmark Clock Tower (of "Big Ben") in the Palace of Westminster (from "Lauderdale Door to the clock itself"). When the Metropolitan Police of London and Hannay reach the top of the clock tower, the agents have already planted the bomb and have locked the clock room. Hannay realises that the bomb is to be set off by the clock timer mechanism at 11.45 am. To give the police more time, Hannay breaks the glass of the outside clock face, climbs out onto the face of the clock, almost 100 meters above ground and physically stops the minute hand as it moves towards the figure IX (11:00 pm). By hanging from the end of the minute hand, Hannay manages to jam the clock at 11.44 am, one minute before, long enough for the police to break into the clock room where they kill the remaining spies and deactivate the bomb. The clock mechanism jams and stops working before the clock's minute hand falls into a vertical position at 11:30 am. Hannay, however, still hangs on and one of the officers saves him with a looped rope larriat. Lomas recognises a Thames River Police uniform and at the docks Hannay and other officers capture Appleton, who had also stolen secret details of the deployment of all Royal Navy warships. Sir Edmund Appleton is convicted of treason and Richard Hannay is declared a hero for helping Britain gain valuable time to prepare defences for a future "Great War'. In the closing shot, Hannay is shown walking arm in arm with Alex Mackenzie.

The film was one of the most popular movies of 1979 at the British box office. Sharp says he was told the film was the most financially successful of all the movies from Rank's revived production slate under Tony Williams. In the UK it had a distributor's gross of £364,434. Greg Smith said that John Buchan's son, Lord Tweedsmuir, was pleased the film used more of his father's book, and that he thought his father would have liked the Big Ben ending.