Alfred Hitchcock’s fame and reputation for crackling, stylish and expressionistic thrillers was pretty well established by the time he got around to “Secret Agent” in 1936.

“The Lodger” has made his name, and “The 39 Steps” and “The Man Who Knew Too Much” had established his stardom in the eyes of critics and his “brand” with the general public.

But “screwball” comedies were all the rage in Hollywood. And Hitchcock, nothing if not a filmmaker keenly aware of what everybody else was up to, indulged in a bit of that himself with “Secret Agent” and quite a bit more of the witty banter, goofy characters and such with “The Lady Vanishes” a couple of years later.

“Secret Agent” has a goofy premise, a couple of seriously screwy characters and some of the wittiest dialogue ever to grace a Hitchock thriller.

A young officer (John Gielgud), a novelist in civilian life, is summoned home from the trenches of France only to see his death notice in the papers. He’d like to know what this is all about from the fellow (Charles Carson) who summoned him.

Now see here, he blusters, but “I don’t even how what your name is.”

“You can call me ‘R.'”

“‘Argh’ as an exclamation?”

“‘R’ as in ‘Rhododendron.”

An entire James Bond franchise spins out of that very exchange.

Capt. Brodie is no more. He is to be Richard Ashendon, ordered to Switzerland to hear the yodeling and see the folk dancing, identify a German agent about to go bribe the Arabs into fighting for Turkey and keep that spy from traveling to Constantinople and Arabia and foiling Britain’s plans for taking Turkey out of the war and taking over much of the Middle East.

Tell me, do you love your country?”

“Well, I’ve just died for it.”

“Ashendon” must have an assistant, somebody the intelligence service refers to as “the hairless Mexican.” He’s considerably more experienced at cold-blooded killings than Captain Brodie/Ashendon. Hitchcock cast the pop-eyed German expressionist star Peter Lorre as “The General.”

“General Pompellio Montezuma De La Vilia De Conde De La Rue,” as our “assistant” grandly introduces himself many times in the movie, is not a “general” any more than he is “hairless” or “a Mexican.” Lorre oozes amoral menace with such glee that we can’t help but be delighted every time he shows up on camera.

“General Pompellio Montezuma De- oh, we’ve already met.”

On arriving in neutral Switzerland, Ashendon and the General stumble into a Germanic Brit (Percy Marmont) with a dashund and a very German wife. Might he be their quarry? Perhaps.

What’s that? “Mrs. Ashendon” has already checked in?

Unflappable Ashendon asks the concierge how fetching she is without letting on his surprise. And he doesn’t let the fact that dropping in on “their” room, he finds the unexpected Missus (Hitchcock blonde Madeleine Carroll) in the tub with an American-accented rake (Robert Young) flirting and coming on strong just outside the bathroom door.

Gielgud, already a star of the British stage but decades before his Oscar-winning wit was put on display in “Arthur,” makes Ashendon the epitome of droll.

“I hope you haven’t been lonely?”

The rat-a-tat dialogue of the early scenes make one grateful for the advent of streaming movies. One almost has to rewatch to catch every arch zinger from Gielgud, Lorre or Young, as Mr. Marvin.

 “Do you understand German, Mr. Marvin?”

“Not a word. But I speak it fluently.”

The tone’s so light and breezy that we have just enough time to forget that this is an espionage thriller, after all. And then there’s a death — a church organist whom we hear has died before our intrepid agents figure out why that organ is hitting and holding such a wailing, dissonant note. The poor man has been strangled and collapsed on the keyboard.

Hitchcock brilliantly (sound) stages a murder at a distance as the novice agent witnesses (we don’t) his hardened killer “assistant” in action on a mountainside.

Mrs. Ashendon is witness to one of the most poignant moments in a Hitchcock film, in the company of the now-dead-man’s wife as their dachsund scratches at a door and then lets out of wailing howl because she knows her owner is dead before anybody else there.

“Secret Agent” has state-of-the-era effects that still manage a chill — a twilight air raid on a Turkish troop train — violence that is mostly off camera, except for the corny finale.

It’s a film that also suffers from dim, dark and washed out prints in streaming circulation, a movie that’s almost lost in the murk that that Hitchcock cooked-up in another black and white homage to his German expressionism fandom.

Look for Lilli Palmer as a “loose” woman The General makes bug-eyes at, flirts with and toys with when it suits him.

It’s always fun to see the sorts of too-handsome-to-be-the-hero roles Robert Young took in the ’30s and early ’40s, decades before “Father Knows Best” or “Marcus Welby: M.D.”

But if we leap to conclusions about his character here, as we inevitably do, it’s only because of a lifetime of getting wise to the tricks of “The Master of Suspense.” Hitchcock coined the phrase “Good villains make good thrillers,” and would have loved for Cary Grant and many other leading men he cast to be “bad guys” that the audience would have to reconcile itself with adoring.

In “Secret Agent,” the dark, dirty and immoral business of murder by government edict is hinted at if never wholly grappled with in a sort of “Thin Man” spy mystery that’s more “Thin Man” witty than mysterious.

It’s movies like this that remind us Hitchock didn’t set out to make “classics,” just entertaining manipulations, suspenseful thrill-rides with a touch of wit and a hint of art about them. It’s movies like “Secret Agent” that made the director, not the stars, the household name, the “brand” film fans would seek out then and for generations to come.

Rating: “approved,” violence

Cast: John Gielgud, Peter Lorre, Madeleine Carroll, Percy Marmont, Lilli Palmer and Robert Young.

Credits: Directed by Albert Hitchcock, scripted by Charles Bennett, based on a play by Campbell Dixon which was based on stories by W. Somerset Maugham. A British Gaumont release on Roku TV, Amazon, etc

Running time: 1:36