Alfred Hitchcock · 1935 · thriller

Alfred Hitchcock's 1935 chase film, the template for everything that followed. A Canadian in London takes a frightened woman home from a music hall and wakes to find her dead with a knife in her back and a map of Scotland in her hand. Wanted for the murder, Richard Hannay runs north to find what the thirty-nine steps are, handcuffed for much of the way to a woman who is certain he did it.

1. 1
   London

   At a London music hall, Richard Hannay's evening is broken up by gunfire and he takes home a woman who says she is followed. She is stabbed in the night, leaving a map of the Highlands and the words the thirty-nine steps.

2. 2
   The Forth Bridge

   He runs for Scotland on the Flying Scotsman with the police working through the carriages, and escapes by climbing out onto the Forth Bridge - the moment that fixed the shape of every chase film that came after it.

3. 3
   Killin

   On the moors above Killin he is passed from a crofter's cottage to a country house whose charming host proves to be the man he hunts - and he runs on across open hill country, handcuffed to a woman who thinks him a murderer.

4. 4
   The London Palladium

   Back in London the answer turns out to be on a stage, in the head of a music-hall performer who memorises anything - and the secret leaves the country only if nobody thinks to ask Mr Memory the right question.