Analysis:

Alongside The Lady Vanishes (1938), The 39 Steps is the best known and most perennially successful of Hitchcock's British films, and is still among the most critically regarded. A free adaptation of John Buchan's popular novel, its central theme is one of Hitchcock's favourites: an apparently ordinary man embroiled by chance in a sinister conspiracy and charged with a murder he did not commit; he must unravel the plot to prove his innocence.

The sequence in which Hannay and Pamela (Madelaine Carroll) - a character who doesn't appear in the novel - are handcuffed together is typically Hitchcockian, and the director fully exploits the dramatic potential of their enforced bond, not neglecting the sexual implications.

Read the full analysis on BFI Screenonline.