Counting Down the Greatest Crime Films of All-Time: # 25

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The Lady Vanishes (1938)

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TYPE OF FILM: Espionage

STUDIO: Gaumont-British

PRODUCER: Edward Black

DIRECTOR: Alfred Hitchcock

SCREENWRITERS: Sidney Gilliatt and Frank Launder; adaptation by Alma Reville

SOURCE: The Wheel Spins, novel by Ethel Lina White

RUNNING TIME: 97 minutes

PRINCIPAL PLAYERS:

Margaret Lockwood…………………………………..…………………………….Iris Henderson

Michael Redgrave……………………………………………………………………………Gilbert

Paul Lukas………………………………………………………………………………….Dr. Hartz

Dame May Whitty……………………………………………………………………….Miss Froy

Googie Withers…………………………………………………………………….………Blanche

Cecil Parker…………………………………………………………………………Mr. Todhunter

Linden Travers……………………………………………………………………..Mrs. Todhunter

Naunton Wayne……………………………………………………………………………Caldicott

Basil Radford……………………………………………………………………………….Charters

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DID YOU KNOW?

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The concept of a person being seen by a large number of people, then disappearing, followed by everyone asserting that the person never existed, is a popular story, with a seed of truth in the Paris Exposition at the turn of the century. It seems the person who “disappeared” there had contracted the plague, and in order to protect the enormous investment of the Exposition as well as to prevent public panic, the person was swept away to a hospital. Everyone with whom he or she had come in contact was sworn to secrecy. The same device was used by Cornell Woolrich in a story, “All at Once, No Alice,” and was the basis for the film So Long at the Fair (1950).

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THE STORY

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Wealthy Iris Henderson is returning from a holiday in the Balkans and meets the septuagenarian Miss Froy (“rhymes with toy,” she tells people) aboard the train. The lovable governess disappears during the course of the trip home. Henderson appears to be the only person interested in locating her, for virtually all the passengers deny ever seeing the old lady. Only Gilbert, a musicologist, believes the lovely young woman, or at least seems to, because he is even more interested in the young woman than the old one. Viewers eventually learn that the passengers are part of a vast spy ring and that Miss Froy, far from being the gentle and apparently scatterbrained old maid she conveys, is in fact a counterespionage agent.

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The Lady Vanishes is one of Alfred Hitchcock’s most entertaining and enduring films. Although ranking high on the suspense level, it is so witty that it might easily be viewed as a comedy. The performances of Naunton Wayne and Basil Radford as a pair of twits mainly concerned with getting back to England in order to see some of the cricket matches at Manchester, utterly unaware of the chaos of World War II looming, were so perfect that the pair went on to play similar characters in several other films. On a more serious level, they were used by Hitchcock to illustrate British noninterventionists, as exemplified by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. Hitchcock’s political position was in deep contrast to that of the Academy of Motion Pictures and Science, which gave a Best Picture nomination to a foreign-language film for the first time. Jean Renoir’s Grand Illusion, a manifesto for isolationism and pacifism, apparently captured the mood of the Academy as well as of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who gave it an unsolicited endorsement.

Hitchcock won the New York Film Critics’ Award for his direction of The Lady Vanishes. Having undergone one name change from the Ethel Lina White book, The Wheel Spins, The Lady Vanishes was also released as Lost Lady.

In one of those decisions Hollywood executives make that leave most viewers flabbergasted and disgusted, some geniuses decided that a remake of Hitchcock’s masterpiece would be a good idea. This occurred in 1979 when the aptly named (in this case) Rank Organisation miscast Elliott Gould in a film so bad that you may regard yourself as fortunate indeed that you have never seen it. A good cast (Cybill Shepherd, Angela Lansbury, Herbert Lom, etc.) reached their cinematic nadirs in the colossal blunder.

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BEST LINE

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Iris Henderson, returning to England from yet another holiday: “I’ve been everywhere, done everything. What is there for me but marriage?”