The Thirty-Nine Steps (1978 film)

The Thirty Nine Steps is a 1978 British thriller directed by Don Sharp and starring Robert Powell as Richard Hannay, the third feature-film adaptation of John Buchan's 1915 spy novel The Thirty-Nine Steps, following Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps (1935) and Ralph Thomas's The 39 Steps (1959).¹ Unlike its predecessors, it returns the story to the novel's pre-First World War period setting, and it is generally regarded as the closest of the screen versions to Buchan's book, despite a climactic sequence on the clock face of Big Ben that has no counterpart in the novel.^{2 • 3}

Relationship to the novel and earlier films

Buchan's novel makes the thirty-nine steps the count of steps from the villain's cliff-top lair down to the sea at low tide. Hitchcock discarded this and used the phrase as the code name of the spy ring (called the Black Stone in the book), while the 1978 film introduced the thirty-nine steps of Big Ben.³ One account notes that, unlike its filmed predecessors, the 1978 version at least returns to Buchan's original notion of the phrase meaning an actual staircase.⁴

The film is widely described as the most faithful of the three screen versions: it shares the novel's full title rather than shortening it to "The 39 Steps", keeps the pre-Great War period, and features most of the characters as described, though it still departs from the book in its plot, notably the Big Ben finale, which was borrowed from Will Hay's My Learned Friend (1943).^{2 • 7} It also recasts Scudder as a more immediately sympathetic character and introduces a love interest.⁴ A contemporary program notes that no film version is a faithful reproduction of the book, but that the 1978 film comes reasonably close, building on the basic premise of an innocent man who learns too much about a spy ring, is pursued across Scotland, and returns to London to foil the villains.³

Production

The film was made by The Rank Organisation with Norfolk International Pictures, produced by Greg Smith from a screenplay by Michael Robson.^{4 • 2} According to one film-history account, the new versions of both The Thirty-Nine Steps and The Lady Vanishes were apparently made to help the Rank Organisation retain the copyright of the Hitchcock films.⁸ The estimated budget was £1,500,000.²

Locations and railways. The film was shot in British locations, and its railway scenes carry the most railway footage of the three versions.^{9 • 7} Because the Forth Bridge could no longer be used, the Victoria Bridge on the Severn Valley Railway stood in for it; Hannay boards his train at what is meant to be St Pancras but is in fact a heavily dressed Marylebone, and the departing train was filmed on the Severn Valley Railway.⁷ IMDb lists the Severn Valley Railway in Shropshire as the filming location for the train scenes, and Albert Court, Prince Consort Road, London as another identified location.^{2 • 10}

Music. Ed Welch composed the score, and also wrote The Thirty Nine Steps Concerto, an extended piece for piano and orchestra in a vein similar to Richard Addinsell's Warsaw Concerto; a soundtrack album was released on United Artists Records.⁴

Release and reception

The film was released in 1978 in the United Kingdom, distributed by Rank, and received a United States release on May 2, 1980.^{2 • 11} Rotten Tomatoes records one critic review at 54 percent on its Tomatometer, with an Esquire review calling it "a smooth, rapid, sophisticated, international spy piece, perfectly produced by the British".⁴ One retrospective account ranks it, after the 1935 Hitchcock film, as the most successful screen version of the story.⁸ John Buchan's son, Lord Tweedsmuir, was reportedly pleased that the movie used more of his father's book, and thought his father would have liked the Big Ben ending.⁴

Reviewers have singled out the Big Ben climax. A Letterboxd review calls the Mission-Impossible-style ending to stop the hands of Big Ben clearly absurd but very well conceived and executed, a gripping piece of action filmmaking, while also criticizing the direction and the runaway-wheelchair sequence.¹² The same program account calls the climax the film's most fundamental deviation from Buchan's story, which in the novel reaches its culmination in a coastal location in Kent.³

Legacy

Robert Powell's performance led to his being asked to play Hannay again in the late 1980s in the ITV television series Hannay, with six episodes in 1988 and seven in 1989.^{3 • 4} A further screen adaptation, a BBC television film of The 39 Steps, followed in 2008.¹ Buchan himself had sold the film rights to the novel in 1935 for £800.⁹

References

1. The Thirty Nine Steps (1978) – FAQ, IMDb
2. The Thirty Nine Steps (1978) – Trivia, IMDb
3. The Thirty-Nine Steps on the Silver Screen, Auckland Theatre Company program
4. The 39 Steps (1978), Rotten Tomatoes
5. The Thirty Nine Steps (1978) – Plot, IMDb
6. Hitchcock's inventions disappear in BBC's latest version of The 39 Steps, The Guardian
7. The Thirty Nine Steps (1978), British Railway Movie Database
8. The Thirty Nine Steps (1978), Cinema Essentials
9. John Buchan and 'The Thirty-Nine Steps', National Library of Scotland
10. Thirty Nine Steps, The (1978), Reelstreets
11. The Thirty Nine Steps, Memorabilia UK
12. The Thirty Nine Steps review by Stephen Morgan, Letterboxd

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026

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