Review: The Lady Vanishes

On a train to England, Margaret Lockwood strikes up a friendship with elderly passenger Mrs. Froy (Dame May Whitty, quite lively for a woman of 73, and it was only her sixth of at least 27 films until her death a decade later, in 1948 at age 83!) who all of a sudden appears to go missing- on a moving train! And none of the other passengers claim to have ever seen her! Michael Redgrave is the charming musician who dearly wants to believe Lockwood’s story, possibly just because he fancies her. Paul Lukas is a wealthy doctor on board, Mary Clare a baroness, Cecil Parker (one of his earliest roles) is a politician who is travelling with his mistress, and Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne play Charters and Caldicott, a pair of proper English idiots who are obsessed with cricket and ignorant to all other matters. Australia’s own Googie Withers has a small, inconsequential role too.

Jolly good 1938 Alfred Hitchcock-directed (“The 39 Steps”, “Strangers on a Train”, “Lifeboat”, “Vertigo”, “Spellbound”) mixture of light comedy, romance, spy movie and puzzling mystery (not as effective as “The 39 Steps”, but few films are) still works very well today, though the formula has cropped up from time to time in other movies (and one ghastly remake with Cybill Shepherd) to lesser effect.

Redgrave (apparently reticent about appearing in films, preferring the theatre) is a charmer, and there’s sturdy support from Lukas and Parker, but the scene-stealers are Whitty and the comic teaming of Radford and Wayne, the first of several times they would play essentially the same characters.

Great fun, and definitely among the top 10 Hitchcock films (I’d place it at # 8 in between “Spellbound” and “To Catch a Thief”).

Rating: B+