Review of The Lady Vanishes (1938) by Devon B — 11 Dec 2008

Back in hollywood's heyday, movies seemed to bounce around their respective categories, or genres, with no regard for the intended audience (or future audience): suspense/thrillers were often heavy with comedy, comedies were thick with musical numbers, musical numbers were filled with fantasy rape scenes.

.. well, perhaps that last one is a bit of a stretch, but you get the idea. In "The Lady Vanishes", a golden age "talkie" from the legendary Alfred Hitchcock, we have a great mystery/suspense film that starts off as an almost straight comedy.

While Hitchcock is no stranger to comedy (most of his films have elements of humor- take the husband/wife interaction in "Frenzy" for example), but here we are treated to an opening that has more in common with "It Happened One Night" than with "Dial "M" for Murder" or "Vertigo".

A storm in an eastern European country causes an assortment of international guests to be trapped in a busy hotel. Two Englishmen are forced to share a maid's quarters (with the maid popping in now and then to lasciviously change clothes, while a group of wealthy women have private suites.

One woman (Lockwood), though, is annoyed when the man (Redgrave) upstairs holds a folk dancing festival in the room above her. He's a musicologist studying the native folk tradition, you see. The next day, as the guests are boarding the train, the woman gets struck on the head by a flower box mysteriously pushed out of the window above her head.

After boarding the train, she faints, and is helped out by the elderly Miss. Froy (Dame May Whitty), who guides her to her seat and has afternoon tea with her as well. After a short nap, the woman wakes up to find Miss Froy gone, and no one on board the train remembers such a woman ever even existing.

Is the woman crazy, or is it a giant conspiracy? It's not the writing that makes this movie so good (too many coincidences must happen in order to set things on their allegedly planned out course), it's the supporting characters, which are very entertaining.

Actually, I must contradict myself, the story is very engaging and entertaining as well.