The Lady Vanishes (1938)

Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock

Written by: Sidney Galliat 

Starring: Margaret Lockwood, Michael Redgrave, Paul Lukas, Dame May Whitty

Rated: Approved

Alfred Hitchcock seems to be far more savvy than even he lets on, creating a perfectly mediocre film, but one that latched onto the Second World War fascination even before that war could be capitalized. The script seems now to be a rather obvious ripoff of Agatha Christie's "Murder on the Orient Express", just without the dynamic characters or the clever explanation at the end. What is far more peculiar is why Hitchcock liked the story and his film so much that he decided to use it second time in his 1950's television show. 

Set on a train outbound from a remote skiing village in Italy, a young playgirl named Iris (Margaret Lockwood) finds herself in mystery story involving the elderly Miss Froy (Dame May Whitty) who seems to have vanished into thin air (as Hitchcock would muse, what is it about thin air that makes it so easy to disappear into?). Suffering a convenient head injury, Iris is escorted into a train car by Miss Froy, shares tea with her, and goes to sleep. When Iris awakens, however, Miss Froy is nowhere to be found, and what's more nobody on the train seems to have any recollection of the woman being on board at all. 

It's a rather conventional story of who knows what and why is everyone keeping mum. Iris teams up with a Cary Grant-esque hero named Gilbert (Michael Redgrave), the two of them facing a host of misadventures involving a series of stereotyped yet amusing supporting characters. Although the film turns out to be a rather serious story it is steeped in comedy, most of the humor involving Hitchcock's jabs at nationalism.

Indeed, what I found most enjoyable about the who thing was not Miss Froy or Iris's battle with the rest of the train who believes she's crazy. After all, the two of them aren't particularly well-constructed characters to begin with, nor were they played memorably. No, the best part of it all was Hitchcock's Orwellian playfulness with the idea of what it means to be English (certainly not British; no one need ever include the bloody Welsh). The two funniest characters are a couple of good ol' boys named Caldicott and Charters, men who obviously know something is amiss on the train, but only care that they aren't delayed lest they miss their cricket match back home. Hitchcock, like Orwell, loved the English and relished in his Englishness right down to the stiff upper lip and unerring manners. A queue must be respected and you never pour the tea unless the water has been properly boiled. 

The gravitas eventually takes over much of the humor and by the end we are fully submersed in the in the type of episode that would be beaten to death by British filmmakers over the next umpteen years. It ends far too abruptly and with the type of sappy ending that positively reeks of cheese. What's unfortunate is that the movie has an unjustifiably long prelude in an Italian hotel which goes nowhere and offers little to no information pertaining to the subsequent story. If their budget allotted only so much screentime it would have made for a far better movie had they shorted the intro and shaped a more challenging ending. One can't help but feel gyped out by how neatly all the loose ends were cleaned up. 

Perhaps there simply wasn't enough to fill in the story though. A train isn't a terribly big location and at its core the plot was rather simplistic. I'm not certain that that there was enough for someone to make a 90 minute movie, and if that was the case then shame on Mr. Hitchcock. Had he only been a bit more patient he could have gotten the rights to Agatha Christie's book and could have added that success to his list, as opposed to losing it to Sidney Lumet. 

1.5/4