Young And Innocent (aka The Girl Was Young) (1937)

When the body of a strangled actress (Pamela Carme) is washed up on a beach, evidence points to the young man (Derrick De Marney) seen leaving the scene and who just happens to be in the dead woman's will. He manages to escape the police and goes on the lam taking the police chief's teen-aged daughter (Nova Pilbeam) with him. Made by Alfred Hitchcock between the better known THE 39 STEPS and THE LADY VANISHES, nevertheless it's prime Hitchcock if on the light side. Hitchcock borrows from THE 39 STEPS with the innocent man on the run with a woman initially reluctant to believe his innocence and if young De Marney and Pilbeam lack the strong screen presence of Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll in that film, they're an immensely likable duo. Hitchcock has a dry run for two of his most famous sequences. An accident in an abandoned mine foreshadows the Cary Grant/Eva Marie Saint Mount Rushmore sequence in NORTH BY NORTHWEST and an impressive tracking shot that would be improved on in NOTORIOUS. His dry wit is in full display in the amusing children's birthday party sequence. With Torin Thatcher and Basil Radford.