The Lady Vanishes (1938 film)
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| The Lady Vanishes | |
|---|---|
 Original movie poster |
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| Directed by | Alfred Hitchcock |
| Produced by | Edward Black (uncredited) for Gaumont British Films |
| Written by | Sidney Gilliat Frank Launder Ethel Lina White (novel) |
| Starring | Margaret Lockwood Michael Redgrave Paul Lukas Dame May Whitty Cecil Parker Linden Travers Naunton Wayne Basil Radford Mary Clare Philip Leaver Catherine Lacey |
| Music by | Louis Levy Charles Williams (both uncredited) |
| Cinematography | Jack E. Cox |
| Distributed by | Gaumont British Films (original UK distributor) MGM (UK) |
| Release date(s) |  Nov 1, 1938 Dec 25, 1938 |
| Running time | 97 min |
| Country | England |
| Language | English |
| Followed by | Night Train to Munich (debated) |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
The Lady Vanishes is a 1938 film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. It was adapted by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder from the novel The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White. It starred Margaret Lockwood, Michael Redgrave and Dame May Whitty. Also in the cast were Paul Lukas, Cecil Parker, Linden Travers, Naunton Wayne, Basil Radford, Mary Clare, Googie Withers, Catherine Lacey, and Sally Stewart.
It was remade under the same title in 1979.
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[edit] Synopsis
In an "uncivilized" region of pre-World War II Europe, a motley group of travellers eager to get back to England is delayed by an avalanche that has blocked the railway tracks. Among the train passengers are Gilbert (Michael Redgrave), a young musicologist who has been studying the folk songs of the region, Iris (Margaret Lockwood), a young woman of independent means who has spent a holiday with some friends but is now returning home to be married, and Miss Froy (May Whitty), an elderly lady who has worked some years abroad as a governess.
When the train resumes its journey, Iris and Miss Froy become acquainted, while the remaining passengers in the compartment appear not to understand a word of English. Iris lapses into unconsciousness (the result of an earlier encounter with a falling flowerpot meant for Miss Froy). When she reawakens, the governess has vanished. Iris is shocked to learn that the other passengers claim Miss Froy never existed. Even the other English travellers deny ever seeing her, for their own reasons.
Fellow passenger Doctor Hartz (Paul Lukas) convinces everyone that she must be hallucinating due to her accident. Undaunted, Iris starts to investigate, joined only by a skeptical Gilbert, with whom she eventually falls in love. They discover that Miss Froy is being held prisoner in a sealed-off compartment supposedly occupied by a seriously ill patient being transported to an operation. They manage to free her, but the train is diverted to a side track, where a shootout ensues. Miss Froy intimates to Gilbert and Iris that she is in fact a British spy assigned to deliver some vital information (the famous Hitchcock MacGuffin) to the Foreign Office in London; after entrusting her message, encoded in a folk song, to Gilbert, she flees under cover of the shootout.
After managing to restart the train and escape, Gilbert and Iris return to London. At the Foreign Office, Gilbert, driven to joyful distraction when Iris accepts his marriage proposal, forgets the tune. Fortunately, Miss Froy has also made good her escape and has already completed her mission herself.
[edit] Differences to the novel
It must be noted that the plot of Hitchcock's film differs considerably from White's novel. In The Wheel Spins, Miss Froy really is an innocent old lady looking forward to seeing her octogenarian parents and witnesses a murder shortly before boarding the train. Interestingly, the Hitchcock version retains the murder — a man singing outside the hotel is strangled prior to the train's departure. However, there is no indication that Miss Froy or anyone else witnesses the murder, and the film provides no explanation. Only after it is revealed that Miss Froy is a spy who is carrying a secret message encrypted in musical notes does it become clear that the murdered singer at the beginning of the movie was most likely conveying the message to her. In White's novel, the wheel keeps spinning: the train never stops, and there is no final shootout.
[edit] Trivia
- The film was originally titled The Lost Lady and was to be directed by Roy William Neill.
- Hitchcock has a cameo role towards the end of the film. He is smoking a cigar in Victoria Station.
- It has often been stated that the action of the movie is set in Nazi-controlled Austria immediately before the outbreak of the Second World War, but in fact the film is set in the fictional country of 'Bandrika'.
- Two of the supporting characters, the hilariously singleminded cricket fans Caldicott and Charters (played by Naunton Wayne and Basil Radford), proved so popular with audiences that they starred in a movie of their own, Crook's Tour (1939), and appeared in several more Gilliat-and-Launder-scripted movies such as Night Train to Munich (1940, also starring Margaret Lockwood again), Millions Like Us (1943), and (as a similar, though less cricket-obsessed, double-act, Straker and Gregg) in the 1949 Passport to Pimlico. They were resurrected again for a BBC television series, Charters & Caldicott, in 1985, (with Michael Aldridge as Caldicott and Robin Bailey as Charters), and recurred in the 1978 remake of The Lady Vanishes (with Arthur Lowe as Charters and Ian Carmichael as Caldicott).
[edit] External links
- The Lady Vanishes at the Internet Movie Database
- The Lady Vanishes at the AFI/Turner Classic Movies database
- Criterion Collection essay by Michael Wilmington
