Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Adapted by Charles Bennett from the novel by John Buchan.

Richard Hannay

• The idle rich? That's kind of an old-fashioned topic these days, especially for me because I'm not rich and I've never been idle. I've been very busy all my life and I expect to be much busier quite soon....And I know what it is to feel lonely and helpless and to have the whole world against me, and those are things that no man or woman ought to feel. And I ask your candidate and all those who love their fellow men to set themselves resolutely to make this world a happier place to live in, a world where no nation plots against nation. Where no neighbor plots against neighbor, where there is no persecution or hunting down, where everybody gets a square deal and a sporting chance, and where people try to help and not to hinder. A world from which suspicions of cruelty and fear have been forever banished. That is the sort of world I want! Is that the sort of world you want.

• [a flock of sheep block the road as the car screeches to a halt] Hello, what are we stopping for? Oh, it's a whole flock of detectives.

Others

• Sheriff: And this bullet stuck among the hymns, eh? Well, I'm not surprised, Mr. Hannay. Some of those Calvinist prayers are terrible hard to get through.

Dialogue

Salesman: [holding up a bra] Put a pretty girl inside those and she needn't be ashamed of herself anywhere.

Traveller: All right. Bring it back to me when it's filled.

Professor: Did she tell you what the foreign agent looked like?

Hannay: There wasn't time. Oh, there was one thing. Part of his little finger was missing.

Professor: Which one?

Hannay: This one, I think. [He holds up his hand.]

Professor: [holding up his hand] Sure it wasn't... this one?

Hannay: There are twenty million women in this island and I've got to be chained to you. Now look here, miss. Once more, I'm telling you the truth...I'm telling it to you now for a third time. There's a dangerous conspiracy against this island. We're the only people who can stop it - what you've seen happen right under your very nose.

Pamela: The gallant knight to the rescue.

Hannay: All right. Then, I'm just a plain common murderer who stabbed an innocent, defenseless woman in the back not four days ago. How do you come out over that? I don't know how innocent you may be, but you're a woman and you're defenseless, and you're alone on a desolate moor in the dark manacled to a murderer who would stop at nothing to get you off his hands. And if that's the situation you prefer, have it, my lovely, and welcome.

Pamela: I'm not afraid of... [She sneezes]

Hannay: For all you know, I may murder a woman a week. So listen to one bit of advice. From now on, do every single thing I can easily do, and do it quick.

Pamela: You big bully!

Hannay: I like your pluck!

Pamela: What made you wake so soon? Dreams?

Hannay: What do you mean, dreams?

Pamela: I've always been told murderers have terrible dreams.

Hannay: Oh, but only at first. Got over that a long time ago. When I first did a crime, I was quite squeamish about it. I was a most sensitive child.

Taglines

• Handcuffed to the girl who double-crossed him

• The "Monte Cristo" hero...

• The MAN who put the MAN in roMANce.

• A hundred steps ahead of any picture this year

• The Most Charming Brute Who Ever Scorned A Lady

• Fated to be Mated with the One Man She Hated

Cast

• Robert Donat - Richard Hannay
• Madeleine Carroll - Pamela
• Lucie Mannheim - Miss Annabella Smith
• Godfrey Tearle - Professor Jordan
• Peggy Ashcroft - Margaret
• John Laurie - John
• Helen Haye - Mrs. Louisa Jordan
• Frank Cellier - Sheriff Watson
• Wylie Watson - Mr. Memory