This isn't one of Hitchcock's finest...it's an example of what happens when a filmmaker relies overmuch on a transcription from the written word, rather than conceiving things anew to make it all work as a film.
The acting is mechanical, the characters are all revealed to us up front to be exactly who they are with no discovery or irony, the outcome as plainly inevitable as clockwork.
But there are images of note...particularly Verloc imagining London blasted into ruin as a film frame jammed in front a projection lamp and then melting. It's an embryonic example of how Hitchcock would later toy with audience perception and perspective, culminating in the likes of 'Foreign Correspondant', 'Rear Window', and 'Psycho'.
The acting is mechanical, the characters are all revealed to us up front to be exactly who they are with no discovery or irony, the outcome as plainly inevitable as clockwork.
But there are images of note...particularly Verloc imagining London blasted into ruin as a film frame jammed in front a projection lamp and then melting. It's an embryonic example of how Hitchcock would later toy with audience perception and perspective, culminating in the likes of 'Foreign Correspondant', 'Rear Window', and 'Psycho'.