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My decision to open this year's Criterion Challenge with <I>À bout de souffle</I> [<I>Breathless</I>] was largely influenced by its run time. I started around 10:30 after the Reds game ended, and I wanted something that would wrap around midnight so I could cleanly consider it a viewing for 1 September. That it was also one of those masterpieces of cinema that dominate my To See list was almost entirely incidental.

Film scholars and critics have spent the last 52 years assessing the place of this film in history and I defer to them on such matters. What I noticed was that the film clearly held sway over Peter Hunt, editor of the early James Bond films. What drives <I>À bout de souffle</I> isn't the charisma of its leading actors (though that would be enough for most pictures), but the kinetic energy created by the editing. Leaps in the background tell us that we're seeing pieces of film cut together; there is no effort to hide that and convince us that we're watching something in real time. Were the different lines delivered in different takes? Were we meant to see this as an abridgment of the stammering of the characters, rather than something to do with the actors? Does it even matter?

I specifically thought of <I>Dr. No</I> during the opening, with Michel nervously dashing through traffic. That whole sequence called to mind the similar sequence in <I>Dr. No</I> where Bond has arrived in Jamaica and is taken for a ride by the cab driver. Only where 007 dispatches the driver setting him up, Michel kills a cop because...

Well, frankly, because he's an idiot. Michel is one of the least likable protagonists I've encountered in a while. I can admit part of my resentment toward him was that I've grown weary of competing with guys like him over the years. They're abrasive and exasperating, often going unchallenged because most people don't feel like engaging them in the matter of attrition of energy that it would become. Particularly irksome, though, is that there are all too often women just like Patricia who entertain and encourage them, validating their obnoxious approach to impressing women.

I do have two storytelling qualms, though. The manhunt for Michel is unconvincing. It's in the newspapers - not that Patricia, who <I>works for one</I>, realizes this - and even scrolls on the electronic ticker, but we only see two guys doing any actual legwork to find him. Not only that, but the inspector on the case has all the urgency of a librarian calling to tell you that your special request has come in and they're waiting for you to come get it. He has some "tough guy" lines, but I remain unconvinced he even really cares about finding Michel.

My other complaint is in the finale itself, when the inspector does indeed catch Michel (thanks to Patricia's betrayal). I suppose my biggest problem is that it feels too neat and perfunctory. In some ways, it's the obvious ending, set up throughout the film. In other ways, though, it seems the lazy way out - to just shoot Michel, and let him stagger down that impossibly long road until he finally collapses in the crosswalk. It's not like the end of <I>Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid</I> or even <I>Bonnie and Clyde</I>, the tragedy somehow feeling triumphant in its own way. Rather, <I>À bout de souffle</I> just kind of shrugs and says, "Should we shoot 'im? Yeah, let's just do that."

I go back to the press interview, in which Patricia (twice) asks the author what is his ambition in life. Finally, he answers her: "To become immortal, and then die." It's a particularly <I>artiste</I> thing to say, and while I could mock it the truth is, I love it. The question then becomes, though, did Michel become immortal before he dies? I don't know that he did. Maybe to Patricia.

There are, of course, several nods to <I>Casablanca</I> throughout. I cannot help but to contrast the endings of the two films. Just as Rick knows that Ilsa leaving Casablanca with her husband will completely put to rest their relationship, Patricia invites the police to apprehend Michel as a means of terminating her whirlwind relationship with him. Patricia needs the closure that she cannot be involved with Michel, and ultimately this is why he has to die on screen. I get it, but it still isn't very satisfying.

One last note: I loved the breezy score to this one. At times, it called to mind Neal Hefti's theme from <I>The Odd Couple</I>. I was also reminded of <I>An Education</I>, and I'd be interested to re-watch that film now that I've seen this.

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The story here inserts Daniel Webster into the story of Faust, so that in the end the famed Congressman can argue that it's un-American to capitulate to the devil. It's the kind of conflation of religion and politics that tends to grate on my nerves very quickly, and the outdated views on American history are particularly irksome for me.

For instance, while preparing to oppose the devil in a trial for the soul of his client, Webster quips that "If two New Hampshire men aren't a match for the devil, we better give the country back to the Indians." That kind of racism makes me cringe whenever I encounter it. I am, of course, trained to distinguish between my contemporary values and those of the period being studied and for a film released in 1941 there's nothing peculiar about this.

Furthermore, there's the nagging matter of Webster's real life legacy. He espoused anti-slavery views, but later helped Henry Clay craft the Missouri Compromise that sacrificed a confrontation over slavery to preserve the Union. We can, of course, debate the pragmatism of the accord but we cannot divest Webster of it to accommodate the character in this film by that name speaking of how an American is not property, a point noted in Tom Piazza's essay, "The Devil and Daniel Webster: The Devil Gets the Best Lines."

Piazza is certainly spot-on as regards the character of Mr. Scratch (The Devil). The performance by Walter Huston is charmingly smarmy, a reminder that for all the talk of Hellfire and brimstone, The Devil is known not for intimidation, but temptation. He's genuinely likable here, despite the sinister undertones of being, y'know, The Devil.

[I would argue, though, that the single best line in the film belongs to Webster. Jabez declines some rum while they await the arrival of Mr. Scratch to claim his soul, to which Webster counters: "Just because you've sold your soul to the Devil, that needn't make you a teetotaler."]

Also engaging is Simone Simon as Mr. Scratch's cohort, the seductress Belle. Simon oozes sexuality every time she's in the frame, often distracting both other characters as well as audience. Her story doesn't really seem to go anywhere, though; she encourages Jabez to withdraw from his family and become more miserly and decadent, and clearly her endgame is to Jabez's utter ruin, but it's unclear whether she's actively pursuing a specific agenda or just along for the ride to ensure that Jabez is constantly surrounded by temptation.

In his essay, Bruce Eder posits that the film represents an artistic triumph borne directly out of Citizen Kane. I can appreciate the influence that Orson Welles's film had on the technical elements of The Devil and Daniel Webster (now that I've seen it, anyway), but where the story of Charles Foster Kane was a mystery to be explored, the tale of Jabez Stone is so obvious and predictable that I found myself wondering when we would just cut to the chase and get to the inevitable trial. Then, once we finally got there, I felt so annoyed at the banalities that there was no satisfaction to be found in the payoff.

I often hear the argument that "it's the journey, not the destination." As an explorer myself, I can appreciate the sentiment but this is an instance where the story is so clearly pushing its destination the whole time that it doesn't invite us to just enjoy the journey. Huston and Simon are enjoyable diversions, but we're so unmistakably headed for the trial that even their delicious scenes seem more to remind us to keep the story moving than to give us a moment to lose ourselves.

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Last year, I picked up a 2-disc Hitchcock DVD set at Target for $2.00. The 39 Steps was one of the ten selections. I meant to watch it last year for the Criterion Challenge but for whatever reason, I didn't. I actually started after midnight with another of the set's features, Secret Agent, but I kept getting interrupted and distracted and gave up on it. Just as I was about to restart it from the beginning, I learned that it followed The 39 Steps in the middle of what some consider Hitchcock's "Spy Trilogy" (the third film is Sabotage). I decided to go to this film instead, and then come back to Secret Agent in its entirety later.

It's easy to see how this story helped establish the paradigm for the spy genre, particularly the sub-genre of ordinary people caught up in the extraordinary machinations and intrigue orchestrated by insidious characters lurking in the shadows...and standing in plain sight before the world as pillars of their communities.

Richard Hannay is the kind of character that nearly any of us can easily recognize as ourselves. He hasn't any special skill set, no training, no gadgets or even any real resources to speak of. He's driven not even out of curiosity, but rather out of desperation. Richard is the victim of Occam's razor; it's far easier for other characters to believe the superficial story (that he murdered the woman he knows as Annabella Smith) than it is for them to believe the truth (that he's caught up in a matter of life-and-death, national security plot). We've all had our day wrecked by someone else's shenanigans at times, and we've all had trouble convincing someone that the way things seem is not how they really are. Richard is one of us.

Hitchcock himself said of the film that what he liked best "are the swift transitions" (quoted by Michael Wilmington in his 1985 essay), and I have to agree. More than once, I found that just as I was getting comfortable and thought I could take for granted where the film was headed, something abrupt would occur and instead of getting ahead of the film, I was now trying to catch up to what had just taken place. Perhaps the most jarring transition is when Richard is in the office of the Scottish sheriff, who professes to believe his story. It all seemed too easy, but by then I'd stopped trying to get ahead of the story. It's breathing, though, allowing me to begin wondering, "Where do we go from here, if Richard is finally square with the law?" And then, just as I've made the mistake of dabbling in speculation, bam! The sheriff brings in Professor Jordan's henchmen, masquerading as police, and I feel as jerked around as does Richard.

It's this kind of constant needling and juxtaposition that gives The 39 Steps not only its structure, but its appeal. Hitchcock knew that the audience ought to be just ahead of the story, and the protagonist just a bit behind. With this one, though, he kept me off-balance enough that I was able to get lost in the yarn myself. It's inadvisable for storytellers to try to create that effect, because it almost certainly guarantees that the story either become too cute or impenetrable; here, though, the master deftly navigates between just enough and too much.

One last note: the finale, in which Mister Memory is revealed to be the carrier of the secret information, triggered thoughts of The Lady Vanishes, where the secret is conveyed by melody. The Lady Vanishes novel was published a year after The 39 Steps film opened, so perhaps there was some measure of influence? I'm too tired to Google it to know for sure, but it seems plausible enough.

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