Secret Agent

Alfred Hitchcock's Secret Agent, one of his early British thrillers, is an odd, off-kilter World War I spy story, its tone largely light and carefree but with some very dark, macabre notes scattered throughout. It's the story of a British spy whose first cover story, as a novelist, is killed off with great ceremony so that he might assume a new identity as Ashenden (John Gielgud). He's sent on a