The Lady Vanishes

The Lady Vanishes (1938) 

Notable cast/crew: Margaret Lockwood as Iris Henderson.  Michael Redgrave as Gilbert.  Dame May Whitty as Miss Froy.  Basil Radford as Charters.

Running time: 97 minutes

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Plot: Iris is among a group of people delayed by weather as they are traversing Europe.  She befriends Gilbert and Miss Froy while they're at the inn waiting to leave.  Iris suffers a blow to the head before leaving and later faints on the train.  After dining with Miss Froy and taking a nap, she asks about Miss Froy.  No one on the train remembers Miss Froy, and they think Iris has gone mad.  Gilbert decides to go along with her to help her find Miss Froy, and little by little, they start to find clues the little, old lady may have been abducted.

I knew I shouldn't have eaten that bean burrito

They find a bandaged person travelling under the care of a nun, and it turns out to be Miss Froy who has been drugged and abducted.  They free her and learn she is a British agent.  She has been passing codes in song tunes, and she teaches them a tune.  She flees the train hoping either she or the others will make it back to England safely with the coded tune.  With Miss Froy gone, the others on the train make their escape back to England by commandeering the train.

Upon arriving at the Foreign Office in London, Gilbert finds he has forgotten the tune.  While racking his brain for it, he hears it played in the next room on a piano.  He and Iris rush in and find Miss Froy has arrived before them and safely conveyed the message.

MacGuffin: The tune

Hitchcock cameo: At the train station smoking a cigar

Hitchcock themes: 

• Suspense
• Mistaken Identity

Verdict: At the time of release, this was the most successful British film ever.  In an interview with Peter Bogdanovich, Alfred Hitchcock explained, "Lady Vanishes was inspired by that legend of an Englishwoman who went with her daughter to the Palace Hotel in Paris in the 1880's, at the time of the Great Exposition. The woman was taken sick, and they sent the girl across Paris to get some medicine, in a horse-vehicle, so it took about four hours, and when she came back she asked, `How's my mother?`  `What mother?`  `My mother.  She's here; she's in her room.  Room 22.`  They go up there.  Different room, different wallpaper, everything.  And the payoff of the whole story is, so the legend goes, that the woman had Bubonic plague, and they dare not let anybody know she died, otherwise all of Paris would have emptied. That was the original situation and pictures like Lady Vanishes were all variations on it."

Aside from the beginning and end of the film, there was no soundtrack.  In order to get the realistic effect, Hitchcock insisted that there should be no background music except for the beginning and end of the film.  The only music the audience hears is source music (music the characters hear): the music sung by the musician outside the hotel, the music tune of Miss Froy, Colonel Bogey March hummed by Gilbert, the dance music conducted by Gilbert in his hotel room, and the dance music when Iris meets Gilbert in the train.

The Charters and Caldicott characters were so popular they were spun off into three subsequent movies, although Hitchcock was not involved with these films at all.

This is my favorite of Hitchcock's British films.  The humor is sharp, the casting is perfect, and the question of whether Iris is losing her mind is played well enough that you start to wonder if the woman really did exist even though you saw scenes with just her prior to boarding the train.  There is almost a sense of relief when the audience is shown that Iris isn't mad.  This is considered by some to be the quintessential Hitchcock thriller.

Out of five bananas, I give it:

Next review: Jamaica Inn