I mentioned for the Adventures of Robin Hood column that my dad was a fan of that film. Well, by sheer dumb luck, my first exposure to Alfred Hitchcock and, by extension, The Lady Vanishes was because my mom wanted to tape it off some TV channel or other. So, I was a fan then? Nah! I was not exactly into black-and-white films back then, but I do remember her attempts to explain the basic plot. I’d see the whole thing later as part of a box set of really early, 1930s Hitchcock films made when he was still working in his native England.
You know what? This is probably the best Hitchcock film to start with for a challenge like this. I mean, it ought to be. According to Wikipedia, this is the Hitchcock film that got Hollywood’s attention, after which the director moved there and his career really took off.
Hitchcock has often been called the “Master of Suspense”. His work is often rife with tension, and his favorite sort of plotline is an ordinary person with few if any special skills finds himself (and sometimes herself but nowhere near as often as it is himself) in a situation well beyond their control. Think Cary Grant’s adman being mistaken for a government agent in North by Northwest or Jimmy Stewart’s witnessing a murder in Rear Window. These are characters who aren’t really equipped to deal with such things, but they deal with them anyway, often putting themselves in great danger in the process. Despite his reputation, Hitchcock made only two outright horror films (Psycho and The Birds), and most of his work might be better characterized as different types of thrillers, involving spies or murder investigations or the like, all with Hitchcock himself popping up somewhere, though you have to look carefully to spot the guy sometimes.
The Lady Vanishes is not really the first of these sorts of films that Hitchcock made, but it is one of his earliest and possibly his first really good one. And it does follow the basic formula. English tourist Iris Henderson (Margaret Henderson) is visiting the fictional country of Bandrika, and while taking a train home, she meets the delightful Miss Froy (Dame May Whitty), a friendly governess and music teacher that befriends the younger woman. After a short nap, however, Iris awakens to find that not only is Miss Froy missing, but everyone else in the car, and indeed on the train itself, claims that Miss Froy was never there. How can a sweet old lady vanish without a trace?
And that’s the premise. Iris goes around, asking various other passengers and crewmen about Miss Froy, but no one claims to have seen her. The only assistance she gets is from one Gilbert Redman (Michael Redgrave), an enthnomusicologist who didn’t actually see Miss Froy but likewise doesn’t dismiss Iris’s beliefs in the old woman’s existence out of hand. That Iris and Gilbert met the night before at a hotel where Gilbert largely annoyed Iris more than anything else is just a sign that the two will be a couple by the end of the film despite the fact Iris is engaged with another man who for some reason did not go on this trip with her.
Oh, there may be a reason, but for a bit of confession: I found the film on HBO Max, and after starting it, I went off to take care of a couple things. I’ve seen The Lady Vanishes before and figured I could miss the opening credits. When I finally did refocus, I was actually starting to wonder if I had the right film playing. The opening scene is set in a hotel where the various characters are staying before they board the train to begin the journey back to England, and it plays out more like some kind of light comedy, where two cricket enthusiasts are apparently sharing a bed and a pair of pajamas (one got the top, the other the bottom) in a manner that would probably provoke some homosexual subtext were this not a film from 1938, especially considering what sort of laws England had on the books back then. I mean, that subtext might still be there, but I thought it was just being played for laughs even if I didn’t find it overly funny.
That could actually describe a lot of The Lady Vanishes. The characters, even Iris and Gilbert as they search for Miss Froy, seem to be taking a rather light-hearted approach to the problem. One of the villains is apparently a stage magician, and a fake nun is spotted because a real nun wouldn’t wear high heals. That said nun turns around to help Iris, Gilbert, and eventually Miss Froy because she’s also English and most of the English have a high sense of comradery going in this film says a lot about perhaps how seriously we as the audience should take it. That Gilbert and Iris can stop in the middle of the search to try on and makes some light banter regarding hats in the luggage car says maybe this isn’t that serious a caper.
That is until the shooting starts in the finale. Miss Froy is, of course, a spy, trying to smuggle a message back home to England in the form of a piece of music. Many of the other passengers on the train are, if not spies themselves, then at least hire help like the fake nun who switches sides. There’s even a shootout between the English passengers and the foreign authorities in the final moments, one where all of the English save one philandering lawyer take part to save each other, including the fake nun. Miss Froy slips out and may or may not be shot (she isn’t, but Hitchcock frames it brilliantly in a way that makes it impossible for the audience to guess otherwise), the cricket enthusiasts either fire out windows with their own weapons or assist Gilbert in getting the locomotive restarted, and the women at the least act as distractions for one enemy soldier on the train. It actually makes for an exciting scene, one that both does and does not fit into the larger context of the rest of the film.
And the film would not be complete with what I always think of as a Hitchcock ending. Hitchcock’s films always seem to end abruptly with little slow down. If you have to wait more than a minute or so for a final reveal, you are either watching Psycho or it’s not really Hitchcock. This film ends just as abruptly. Iris and Gilbert, now a couple, go to deliver Miss Froy’s message to the government only to find her playing it on a piano for her superiors. The excited and happy look on Froy’s face as she reaches out for the two surprised young people is literally the last shot of the film. What happened after that? It may not matter, not really, but I think it is safe to say Hitchcock didn’t really care.
And why should he? This film gave him the decades-spanning career he would enjoy in Hollywood. And he has three more entries in this series for me before I am finished here. But I won’t be getting to them for a while from the looks of things. In the meantime…
NEXT: I’ve got something I’ve never seen before for the next entry, and I am going to guess the only Romanian film in the entire countdown. Be back soon for the 2007 arthouse abortion film 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days.
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