- Alfred Hitchcock's Secret Agent is a quirky spy story that slowly transforms from mostly comedy to mostly drama. The action revolves around the newly-christened Richard Ashenden (John Gielgud), who discovers that the British Intelligence Service, headed by the anonymous "R" (Charles Carson), has faked the death of Ashenden's former identity. Fortunately, Ashenden loves his country ("Well, I've just died for it") and agrees to become a secret government agent. His assignment is to travel to Switzerland to deal with an agent leaking information to the enemies of Britain. Assisting him are the flamboyantly foreign General (Peter Lorre) and, to everyone's surprise, a woman pretending to be Ashenden's wife Elsa (Madeleine Carroll).
- The early parts of the film are fairly predictable, as The General clowns around while the not-so-happy couple playfully feuds. When Ashenden and The General find that their contact has been killed, however, things get more serious. They trace the killing back to a Mr. Caypor (Percy Marmont), who agrees to take the two men on a mountain hike. Although both Ashenden and Elsa begin to have some doubts that Caypor is their spy, The General remains convinced and acts accordingly. This leads to the best scene in the film, as a horrified Ashenden watches helplessly from a distance as The General kills Caypor. The impact of this scene is further augmented by interspersed shots of the dead man's dog howling plaintively. British Intelligence's subsequent revelation that Caypor really was the wrong man convinces Elsa to quit the spy business, but the two men march off to follow their next lead.
- After a brief detour through a chocolate factory-turned-spyhouse, The General and Ashenden meet Elsa at a train station. As it happens, the man they're really after is Elsa's flirtatious friend Mr. Marvin (Robert Young), and he's boarding a train to Constantinople. Everybody gets aboard, but the train crosses into enemy territory before the spies can act. Fortunately, the RAF launches a surprise bombing that successfully derails Marvin's plans, among other things. The end of the film features some surprisingly good special effects, most of which appear to have been accomplished with models. One may legitimately wonder why British Intelligence sent in spies if planes could do the job, but at least those planes looked good.
- On the whole, this is admittedly not one of Hitchcock's better films. Okay, it's probably not even in his top twenty. Although Gielgud is an acceptable lead, Lorre is not an effective comedian, and his General is thus much more convincing with a knife than a joke. Still, the murder on the mountain is wonderfully handled, as is the final train sequence. I guess Secret Agent is a useful reminder that it would be a while before Hitchcock's skills with romance or comedy would match his adroitness with suspense.
- No Hitchcock cameo in this one, as far as I could tell.
