The Lady Vanishes (DVD)

The Lady Vanishes is an Alfred Hitchcock thriller released in 1938.


In a fictional Central European country just prior to World War II a handful of British people are delayed overnight due to an avalanche. As their home bound train not due to leave until the morning; we get to see these travellers in an over booked hotel trying to get food and sleep against the odds. Iris is on her way home to get married and becomes acquainted ...
...the hotel. Their acquaintance is due to a mutual complaint about a very noisy guest above their rooms who turns out to be the rather annoying Gilbert, a musician (or rather a musicologist). On the train the following day Iris ends up sharing a compartment with Miss Froy and a handful with others. Waking up after a brief nap, she finds that Miss Froy has seemingly disappeared and none of her fellow passengers admit to ever having seen her. Iris is ... more

The Lady Vanishes is an Alfred Hitchcock thriller released in 1938.

In a fictional Central European country just prior to World War II a handful of British people are delayed overnight due to an avalanche. As their home bound train not due to leave until the morning; we get to see these travellers in an over booked hotel trying to get food and sleep against the odds. Iris is on her way home to get married and becomes acquainted with the pleasant elderly Miss Froy during the evening at the hotel. Their acquaintance is due to a mutual complaint about a very noisy guest above their rooms who turns out to be the rather annoying Gilbert, a musician (or rather a musicologist). On the train the following day Iris ends up sharing a compartment with Miss Froy and a handful with others. Waking up after a brief nap, she finds that Miss Froy has seemingly disappeared and none of her fellow passengers admit to ever having seen her. Iris is determined to find out where Miss Froy has gone and manages to enlist the help of Gilbert even though he seems to doubt her sanity

Where did Miss Froy disappear to? Was she ever real or just a figment of Iris’ imagination? Why on earth would anyone want to harm a little old lady who seems so pleasant and harmless?

The film starts off in quite a humorous manner with most of the British guests in the hotel coming across as being rather pompous and expecting special treatment. The characters Charters and Caldicott (played by Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne respectively) seem most annoying as all they seem concerned about is getting to Manchester so they can watch the cricket. They even try to call home to get the current cricket scores but to no avail and this is where you start to see some of their pompous upper class behaviour which makes them seem rather selfish later on in the film.

Here in the hotel we meet the pretty young socialite Iris Henderson (played by Margaret Lockwood) who has spent some “girly” time with her friends and is returning home alone to England to be married who accidentally meets the elderly Miss Froy (Dame May Whitty) when Gilbert (Michael Redgrave) is behaving quite selfishly by insisting on having some local dancers dance for him to help with his music research. Iris and Miss Froy bond over their mutual need to complain to the hotel management about the noise from upstairs that Gilbert is causing who just carries on wanting a couple of local dancers to dance for him despite being advised that it is disturbing people who wish to get to sleep. We also meet another British couple Mr and Mrs Todhunter (Cecil Parker & Linden Travers) who are not actually married but pretending to be on honeymoon.

The scene is set for our British travellers on a train homeward bound, but not before Iris gets hit on the head by a flowerpot falling from above shortly before boarding the train. This is the incident that leads Miss Froy to sit with Iris in the same compartment so she can look after her and also sees Iris and Miss Froy having tea together in the dining car with them meeting the cricket addicts and the “honeymoon couple”. On returning to their compartment Irish has a nap and it is from here on in that things get sinister as when she awakens everyone seems to deny knowledge of ever having seen Miss Froy. A doctor aboard the train (Paul Lukas) implies that she is imagining things because of the bump to her head but Iris is determined that she could not imagine a woman and know so much detail about her, even when a lady in a tweed suit is produced – the same suit Miss Froy was wearing. From here on in we see the determination of a young British girl who is adamant that she is not imagining things and how she goes about trying to find out the truth about Miss Froy and what happened to her. We see a rather endearing friendship strike up between Iris and Gilbert and their on screen chemistry was really enjoyable to watch – even though it was so innocently portrayed.

I found the character of Miss Froy portrayed as rather eccentric and one couldn’t help but smile at the rather old-fashioned but wise way in which she spoke to the much younger character of Iris with whom her character bonds so easily. Michael Redgrave played Gilbert so easily that one really wanted to give his character a sedative to calm him down at the start of the film but he’s so likeable that one can’t help being charmed by his bubbly nature as the film progresses. I personally found Margaret Lockwood’s character to be the main star of the film – as with many of Hitchcock’s movies where there is a strong female character around whom the plot focuses, in this film the central character is Iris. She is dead pan during the first half hour which is mostly comedic, so much so that you have to chuckle at her somewhat. She’s very feminine during the romance scenes and extremely credible when things get a bit scary too. Not taking anything away from Redgrave who looked and played his part to perfection too.

I have to admit that I found this to be one of Hitchcock’s funnier thrillers. The film has quite a bit of humour in it and there’s a lot of poking fun at the stiff upper lip behaviour of Brits in general, which, as a Brit, I can take in good humour.

I’ve not read the 1936 novel The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White on which this film was based but I understand that there are some major plot differences. As I’ve not read the book I can’t judge whether this is a good or bad thing for the film but I really enjoyed the film which was adapted for the screen by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder. The cinematography was by Jack E Cox and the film runs for just over 90 minutes. The film is entirely in black and white and it was released on DVD in 2003 with a Universal rating (suitable for all ages). The music direction for the film was by Louis Levy - I haven't written separately about the music but felt it was wholly appropriate for the film and suspenseful enough where required whilst not taking over from the drama of the scenes.

Now for a bit about the DVD extras. There’s a 4 minute introduction by Charles Barr, a film historian, who starts by saying he’s wearing a tie from the MCC (Marylebone Cricket Club), in honour of the two cricket crazy characters in the film. He refers to them as the most memorable characters of the film! Barr also explains that these two characters were entirely made up as they do not exist in the novel. Then we have the “Original Theatrical Trailer” which runs for just under 2 minutes - being original it is quite grainy and it’s just how you might picture this film being advertised way back then in the late 30s, and obviously uses some of the more dramatic scenes from the film. There’s also an image gallery which is basically about 2.5 minutes of random scene shots from the film which play like a screen show as well as marketing posters of the film and even a few shots of Hitchcock with cast members during filming.

I would be happy to give The Lady Vanishes a strong 8 out of 10. It is certainly a very enjoyable thriller with elements of comedy and a bit of romance and it is definitely a film that is staying in my permanent DVD collection. I would hope the film would appeal to all those who enjoy old black and white films although some might find the overt “British-ness” of some of the characters rather dated.

Of course, I mustn’t forget to mention that there is the cameo appearance of Hitchcock himself in the film which I always enjoy looking out for; no matter how many times I’ve seen one of his films! You might also be interested to know that Hitchcock won the 1939 New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Director for the film. After The Lady Vanishes, Hitchcock only directed Jamaica Inn in the UK before going off to the USA... 

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