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Secret Agent is a 1936 British film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, loosely based on two stories in Ashenden: Or the British Agent by W. Somerset Maugham. The film starred John Gielgud, Peter Lorre, Madeleine Carroll and Robert Young. Future star Michael Redgrave made a brief, uncredited appearance.

Plot

Gielgud plays a British officer, a famous writer whose death is faked during World War I, and who is sent by the mysterious "R", head of British intelligence, to Switzerland on a secret mission. Carroll plays a female agent who poses as his wife. Lorre appears as a British agent working with them, a killer known variously as "the Hairless Mexican" and "the General".

Typical Hitchcockian themes used here include mistaken identity and murder.

Cast

• John Gielgud - Richard Ashenden
• Peter Lorre - The General
• Madeleine Carroll - Elsa Carrington
• Robert Young - Robert Marvin
• Percy Marmont - Caypor
• Florence Kahn - Mrs. Caypor
• Charles Carson - 'R'
• Lilli Palmer - Lilli

External links

• Secret Agent at IMDb
• Secret Agent is available for free viewing and download at the Internet Archive
• View online
• Elisabeth Weis, 1982, The Silent Scream — Alfred Hitchcock's Sound Track (1982), "Expressionism at its Height: Secret Agent" — a discussion of Hitchcoock's use of sound in the film.
• Movie Diva, 2001 review
• Secret Agent Eyegate Gallery

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• 1936 films
• 1930s thriller films
• 1930s romance films
• Black-and-white films
• British films
• English-language films
• Films based on novels
• Films directed by Alfred Hitchcock
• Romantic period films
• Films shot in Switzerland
• Spy films
• 1930s British film stubs