[e-mail] Review of The Lady Vanishes

The Lady Vanishes (1938)

Good, If Somewhat Creaky : POSSIBLE SPOILER

[8/10 · 21 April 2012]

This film by Alfred Hitchcock benefits from excellent performances by Margaret Lockwood as a beautiful young woman en route to London to be married, Dame May Witty as Miss Froy, an older woman who helps her after she's been hit in the head at the railroad station by a falling object, Michael Redgrave in an early role as an itinerant musician and Paul Lukas as a mysterious brain surgeon taking a patient aboard the same train to a hospital for an operation. Unlike later Hitchcock movies, "The Lady Vanishes" is quite predictable. One guesses early on where Miss Froy has vanished, how the pairing of Ms. Lockwood and Redgrave will end up and what the mysterious doctor is up to. Nevertheless, Hitchcock wrings more tension out of this transparent plot than might be anticipated, and he manages to seed the movie with the humor that became a distinctive feature of his long career. One scene made no sense whatever to me. I'm sure I saw a hand pushing the pot or brick that fell on Ms. Lockwood's head. The result of the knock on the head has an immediate connection to the events that follow. But if she was deliberately targeted, who might have done it and why eluded me completely.