Travel south to Newport, Rhode Island some weekend and you might find yourself walking the Cliff Walk, a popular coastal path hewn into the rock where the Atlantic comes ashore. As it winds along the water’s edge, the Walk on its other side butts up against the back yards of a Who’s Who of the town’s Gilded Age residents. The mansions that overlook the water—mere “summer cottages” to original owners like the Vanderbilts, scandal plagued playgrounds to later residents like Claus von B?low and Doris Duke (who was also known to keep camels on the grounds)—provide a manmade counterpoint to the enormity of the ocean.
As you move further along the trail, there’s a picturesque overlook at the end of Narragansett Avenue, complete with a steep stone stairway leading down to a rocky outcrop above the pounding surf: The Forty Steps. Supposedly an old weekend gathering point for the town’s large population of servants, the vertiginous stairs have long since become more of a photo opportunity than a place to unleash an Irish jig.
Even so, the Steps retain a draw that goes beyond snapshots. As a young man growing up within walking distance of the landmark, I spent plenty of nights staring out at the sea through a spray of salt water—mix the churning ocean with the hard marble and gold of those mansions, and the result is a kind of intoxicatingly elegant dangerousness.
It’s that particular mixture that springs to mind whenever I consider the similarly named The 39 Steps, an early (1935) Alfred Hitchcock success that paved the way for later masterworks like North By Northwest and The Man Who Knew Too Much. Screening as the inaugural work in Amherst Cinema’s HITCHCOCK! Film Series, it features Robert Donat as a young man who finds himself thrust into the middle of an international espionage caper.
With Hitchcock, it’s never a good idea to give away too much, but you can rest assured that, as always, he provides a rare mix of the familiar and the foreign, and that the surprises, like waves, come when you aren’t expecting them.
Also this week: Fans of the Coen Brothers’ odd and intense style of noir—think No Country For Old Men, or their early work Blood Simple—should enjoy Terribly Happy, a new film from Danish director Henrik Ruben Genz currently at Pleasant Street Theater in Northampton. Focusing on compromised Copenhagen policeman Robert Hanson (Jakob Cedergren) as he navigates a new posting in a provincial town, the film is an exploration of the great lengths we go to in order to maintain a sense of security—even if it turns out to be illusory.
Jack Brown can be reached at cinemadope@gmail.com.
