Directors

In THE 39 STEPS (1935), director Alfred Hitchcock can be spotted walking by a bus stop. Towards the beginning of the film, both Hitchcock and the screenwriter Charles Bennett can be seen walking past the bus that Robert Donat and Lucie Mannheim board outside the music hall. The bus is on London Transport’s number 25 route, which runs from Oxford Street through the East End and on to Leytonstone. This was familiar ground to Hitchcock, who lived in Leytonstone and then in Stepney (in the East End) as a youth. The director’s appearance can thus be seen as an assertion of his connection with the area, but he was by no means romanticizing it. As the bus pulls up he litters by throwing a cigarette packet on the ground.

In THE 400 BLOWS, French New Wave director François Truffaut himself makes a cameo appearance in the funfair ride. He’s the man in the black coat & scarf.

One of the defining films of the French New Wave, the film received numerous awards and nominations, including the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Director, the OCIC Award, and a Palme d’Or nomination in 1959. The film was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Writing in 1960.