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The Secret Agent (1936) Screenplay:Charles Bennett,Ian Hay,Jesse Lasky,jr., from the play by Campbell Dixon based on two short stories by W.Somerset Maugham.
CAST: John Gielgud, Madeleine Carroll,
Peter Lorre, Robert Young, 
PLOT: The film starts with a bogus funeral (of British secret agent Ashenden) and follow his attempts to kill a german spy, and ends with the crash of the Orient Express which does the reluctant Ashenden's work for him.
John Gielgud plays Ashenden, and the actor plays it with aplomb, also at hand are Carroll and a scene stealing Lorre and Robert Young as the villain. The film is well made but somehow cold, an unsatisfactory sequel to "The 39 Steps"driving tour de force. Young and Innocent (1937) (US title: The Girl Was Young)
Scenography: based on the novel" A shilling for candles" by Josephine Tey
CAST: Derrick de Marney,
Nova Pilbeam 
PLOT:
Surprisingly much underrated, this film contains none of the moral turpitude of the previous work, but also no leading players to recommend it, although it stands as a fine example of Hitchcok's work in the 30s. A young man accused of a crime he did not commit, and realizing his nice lawyer is incompetent, escape with the help of a girl and tries to find the real killer. 
The most memorable moment of this engaging thriller is an exhilarating crane shot at the film's climax.The girl sits at a table in a vast hotel ballroom, scanning the faces of the dancing couples,searching for the real murderer, who she knows can be recognized by a facial tic. To prove that the task is not impossible, Hitchcock, in a bewitching,fluid camera movement that start to the top of the set, glides down through the crowd to finally settle on the twitching eyes in the blackened face of the band drummer.The shot took two days to film. Jamaica Inn (1939) Screenplay: Sidney Gilliat, J.B.Priestley from the novel by Daphne du Maurier
CAST: Charles Laughton, Leslie Banks,
Maureen O'Hara, Basil Radford,
Emlyn Williams, Robert Newton,
Mervyn Johns, PLOT:
The story of a young girl forced to stay in Cornwall with her wicked uncle, the landlord of the infamous Jamaica Inn, a hotbed of smuggling since the 16th century. Head of the smugglers was the local squire (Laughton).
Hitchcock accepted to direct it as a favor to Laughton but it was a vexing task for him and the only consolation was that the film was a considerable box-office success and enhanced his directorial reputation. 
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| Maureen O' Hara |
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Sabotage (1937) (US title: "The Woman Alone")
Screenplay: Charles Bennett, Ian Hay based on a story by Joseph Conrad.
CAST: Sylvia Sidney, John Loder,
Oscar Homolka, Desmond Tester 
PLOT:
The story told is of an ostensibly benign cinema manager, Verloc(Homolka), who is in fact an anarchist saboteur. He lives behind the cinema with his young wife and her younger brother, who is eventually killed when tricked into carrying a time bomb for Verloc. Beside herself with grief, the wife stabs her husband but escapes detection thanks to a convenient explosion in the cinema which destroy the corpse and the knife. 
Sabotage, despite its overtly melodramatic feel, and the callous dismissal of the child, has sufficient moments spread through its length to ensure a worthy place in Hitchcok's works. The acting was good, especially by Homolka. It is also the end of the "dark period" of The director's British work. With the clouds of war looming over Europe, Hitchcock turned to the relief of escapist adventure for his last British films. The Lady Vanishes (1938) Screenplay: Frank Launder, Sidney Gilliat, Alma Hitchcock, from the novel"The wheel spins" by Ethel Lina White(outline)
CAST:
Michael Redgrave, Margaret Lockwood,
Basil Radford, Naunton Wayne,
Dame May Whitty, Cecil Parker,
Paul Lukas, 
PLOT:
A young english girl on her way back from the Balkans to be married in England befriends a scatty old English lady who disappears. The other passengers deny all knowledge of her. Only a music student, albeit grudgingly, will listen to the girl. Together they find the lady and help her to escape back to london, with her top-secret message,while they and the train's other pasengers hold off the sinister agents of a mysterious foreign power. 
The film is delightful and the interplay between the actors is perfect. To add the comic touch the couple of Radford and Wayne as two cricket-mad passenger, almost steal the film. 
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