The Lady Vanishes

This is a cracking Hitchcock classic made by the director towards the tail end of his time in England and before he moved to Hollywood. Throughout the 1930s Hitchcock went from strength to strength, adapting to the advent of films with sound and making leaps and bounds in terms of narrative structure and the creation of audience tension. By the time he made The Lady Vanishes in 1938 he had become the master of suspense, constricted only by budgets (something that would change when he started making films in America during the 1940s).

The plot is deceptively simple... a young woman, Iris (Margaret Lockwood) meets a distinguished old lady (Dame May Whitty) on a trans-continental European train. After having a bit of nap, Iris wakes up to find no trace of the lady on the train at all. A psychiatrist on board (Paul Lukas) tries to convince her that the lady was a figment of her imagination, but Iris knows better. She teams up with another passenger, the musician Gilbert (Michael Redgrave), and decides to get to the bottom of it.

This is the archetypal British Hitchcock film, full of his usual entertaining mix of spy shenanigans and twists, and easily one of the standouts of his British output. The great thing about Hitchcock (when he was on game) is that not a single scene is wasted, every shot feels deliberate and precise and what he does and doesn't let you in on becomes an active part of watching the film. It's great fun.

TRIVIA: Two supporting characters in this film, Charters and Caldicott (a pair of hilariously single-minded cricket enthusiasts) were so popular at the time of the release of The Lady Vanishes that they went on to have supporting and leading roles in a variety of other thriller films and radio serials.

DIRECTOR: Alfred Hitchcock
WRITER/SOURCE: Written by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder, based on a novel by Ethel Lina White.
KEY ACTORS: Margaret Lockwood, Michael Redgrave, Dame May Whitty, Paul Lukas.

RELATED TEXTS
- The novel The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White, on which this film is based.
- A remake with a primarily American cast (Elliott Gould, Cybill Shepherd) was made in 1979 by the UK Production company Hammer (who were more well known for horror films). It was Hammer's last film before shutting up shop.

AWARDS:
Hitchcock won a director's award from the New York Critics Circle.