THE LADY VANISHES (1938), dir. Alfred Hitchcock
…but the ‘Master of Suspense’ Makes his Presence Felt
Imagine waking up and discovering that someone you know had disappeared. Worse, imagine trying to convince other people, only to be told that the person never existed.
It sounds like the premise of the recent thriller “Flightplan,” but it actually describes a Hitchcock film made more than sixty years earlier. In “The Lady Vanishes,” written by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder, Margaret Lockwood plays Iris Henderson, an American travelling abroad who stumbles across a conspiracy.
The missing person is a retired governess named Miss Froy (Dame May Whitty), whom Iris befriends while staying at a hotel in a small European country. The next day, Iris takes a bump on the head, and Miss Froy comes to her rescue. But shortly after their train leaves the station, the kindly old woman disappears.
Miss Henderson insists she had a companion on the train, but the others in her drawing room recall no such person. Neither can the porter, nor anybody else, from the paranoid banister (Cecil Parker) to the fellows hurrying home to see a cricket match (Naunton Wayne, Basil Radford). Only Gilbert (Michael Redgrave), a cadish musician who made a terrible impression the night before, reluctantly believes Iris’ story. While he has never met Miss Froy himself, a particular clue persuades him that foul play is indeed afoot.
As for the reasons that motivated Miss Froy’s kidnapping, let’s just say there is more to her than meets the eye, even as the movie itself has less substance than we might expect. Like some of Hitchcock’s best movies—“North by Northwest” springs to mind—the plot merely serves as a delivery system for the director’s particular brand of thrilling cinema. For a man with such prodigious artistic gifts, Hitchcock certainly had a great instinct for giving the audience what they wanted. In the case of “The Lady Vanishes,” he gives them suspense, laughs, images that linger in the mind. He even throws in a charming romance between the seemingly mismatched Lockwood and Redgrave.
A brain doctor (Paul Lukas), rendezvousing with a terminal patient in Prague, tries to convince Iris that Miss Froy is really a figment of her imagination. Is it possible Iris created her, that she is the result of her bump on the head? Or perhaps, considering those upcoming nuptials with an aristocrat in England, Iris is simply preoccupied. Could she be distracting herself, the better to ignore her dread? She admits to not loving him, but her father wants to put his coat of arms next to the company name.
For a while, Hitchcock teases us with the possibility that Miss Froy is indeed a figment of Iris’ mind. During the first scene, which takes place in the hotel lobby, she enters, briefly interacts with the hotel clerk, and then exits through the front door. Hardly anybody seems to notice her. Stranger still, Hitchcock has one of his technicians—probably sound man Sydney Wiles—turn off the boom mikes so that the music and some select noises overlap any spoken dialogue.
The effect is slightly eerie; and the director, superlative craftsman that he was, orders the actors to stay relatively still until Miss Froy leaves. Ultimately, he manipulates image and sound to completely undercut Dame Whitty’s presence. But something about her lingers in the moments after she leaves, like the remnants of a faded memory. Then the rest of the actors start moving, more sounds appear on the audio track, characters recite their lines, and things pick up.
Meanwhile, any doubts we may have about the disappeared woman’s nature only persist to a certain point, then the race to find her begins. Naturally, villains toss in a few unexpected curves to throw off the amateur sleuths, such as a doppelganger for Miss Froy. While her facial features don’t bear much resemblance, she wears a similarly colored outfit, and claims to be the one who helped Iris earlier. Iris insists that this newly emerged woman is not her friend. However, the train has yet to take on new passengers, save for the doctor’s patient in a gurney, and the manifest shows the same number of people.
So if the woman isn’t Miss Froy, why does she pretend that she is? And how did she manage to board the train in the first place, without either Iris or Gilbert spotting her? This is the most satisfying mind-bender in the entire movie, but to Hitchcock’s credit, he finds a way to explain it satisfactorily.
Another thing he does well is portray Iris and Gilbert as “everyman” heroes. Regular joes can show formidable intelligence, but the brain must serve as their primary weapon. The director seems to understand this; whenever the two stars have to get physical, Hitchcock boxes out the action in a clumsy, slapsticky, but believable way. If an exception exists, it is the sequence towards the end, when Gilbert climbs out the window and makes his way along the side of the train.
The camera shoots him from outside the locomotive. As he dangles between two windows, an oncoming train nearly smashes him. While this seems a bit forced, given that Redgrave’s character is primarily funny and romantic, one cannot argue that the resulting shot is a jolter. Hitchcock, who would create some truly memorable compositions and juxtapositions in future, better movies—a few of which also involved trains—was definitely on the right track this time.
“We’re not in England now.”
Indeed, the characters in “The Lady Vanishes” have boarded a train to Hitchcock-land. Here, unspeakable acts occur in places associated with “safe” feelings by the audience. Remember “Psycho,” and the notorious scene of Janet Leigh getting stabbed in the shower? It took theater audiences completely by surprise, since no one expected such a deed to occur in a clean bathroom setting. It’s not exactly a dark alleyway, where people get killed all the time.
Throughout his career, the effectiveness of Hitchcock’s suspense movies have had to do with confounding the audience’s expectations. The same way that the virginal white porcelain of the Bates motel held a certain unspoiled purity, the passenger rail in “The Lady Vanishes” gives off a cozy, hospitable vibe. In a place such as this, travelers and business-people enjoy comforts resembling home. One can purchase a drawing room with cushioned seats, or drink hot tea in the dining car. And someone like Miss Froy, travelling across the European continent, regularly finds yourself in the company of fellow British citizens.
As viewers, we are meant to ask ourselves, How can someone disappear from a place like this? Especially considering the presence of other subjects of the crown, who are also away from the sovereign state. One would expect countrymen to look out for one another, that nothing nefarious could befall an Englishwoman in the near-constant presence of her own brethren.
But herein lies much of the “The Lady Vanishes”’ humor: How these British civilians—even when they’re no longer in England—expect a certain standard of decorum to be upheld. As a result of their stiff upper lips, Miss Froy’s disappearance doesn’t arouse any outrage. After all, why should they waste their rancor on something that simply cannot happen to an English citizen? Like twits, they assume she must not be real, otherwise she would be taking her tea in the dining car, not causing a ruckus throughout the train.
This type of naivete especially applies to the pair of cricket enthusiasts, who hide in their cabin to avoid being questioned by Iris. These two played no part in the actual scheme to disappear the lady. However, they fear any answers they give will only lead to further inquiry, which might prevent them from reaching their cricket match.
Therefore, even though they had a conversation with Miss Froy, they agree with the brain doctor and Iris’ cabin mates, who say the missing woman must be a figment of the poor girl’s imagination. As one of the gentlemen puts it, “An Englishwoman doesn’t just disappear into thin air.” Indeed, Miss Froy did not. However, these two cricket buffs have the equation all wrong: it is possible for Miss Froy to be missing, and still be an actual person; it is possible for Miss Froy to be an Englishwoman, and to have disappeared from the train. But neither gentleman believes that one or the other condition can exist independently.
*** Warning! The following contains information of a SPOILOUS nature! *** Even after the vanished lady returns, they refuse to accept what happened to her. Iris and Gilbert try to explain, and the old woman herself clearly looks worked over. But their reply is fairly dismissive. “My dear chap, you must have gotten the wrong end of the stick somewhere,” says one.
“Yes, these things just don’t happen,” says the other.
This misguided sense of immunity nearly leads to comic tragedy. Prior to the film’s climactic scene, Gilbert tries to warn everyone in the dining car that they have been detached from the rest of the train, and are now headed towards a trap. But even the most obvious evidence, such as how the car is rolling backward in the direction they just came from, fails to have an effect. “There’s nothing left of the train beyond the sleeping car,” Gilbert insists.
“There must be,” one of the cricket enthusiasts replies. “Our bags are in the first class carriage.”
Overall rating: **** (out of ****)
Imagine waking up and discovering that someone you know had disappeared. Worse, imagine trying to convince other people, only to be told that the person never existed.
It sounds like the premise of the recent thriller “Flightplan,” but it actually describes a Hitchcock film made more than sixty years earlier. In “The Lady Vanishes,” written by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder, Margaret Lockwood plays Iris Henderson, an American travelling abroad who stumbles across a conspiracy.
The missing person is a retired governess named Miss Froy (Dame May Whitty), whom Iris befriends while staying at a hotel in a small European country. The next day, Iris takes a bump on the head, and Miss Froy comes to her rescue. But shortly after their train leaves the station, the kindly old woman disappears.
Miss Henderson insists she had a companion on the train, but the others in her drawing room recall no such person. Neither can the porter, nor anybody else, from the paranoid banister (Cecil Parker) to the fellows hurrying home to see a cricket match (Naunton Wayne, Basil Radford). Only Gilbert (Michael Redgrave), a cadish musician who made a terrible impression the night before, reluctantly believes Iris’ story. While he has never met Miss Froy himself, a particular clue persuades him that foul play is indeed afoot.
As for the reasons that motivated Miss Froy’s kidnapping, let’s just say there is more to her than meets the eye, even as the movie itself has less substance than we might expect. Like some of Hitchcock’s best movies—“North by Northwest” springs to mind—the plot merely serves as a delivery system for the director’s particular brand of thrilling cinema. For a man with such prodigious artistic gifts, Hitchcock certainly had a great instinct for giving the audience what they wanted. In the case of “The Lady Vanishes,” he gives them suspense, laughs, images that linger in the mind. He even throws in a charming romance between the seemingly mismatched Lockwood and Redgrave.
A brain doctor (Paul Lukas), rendezvousing with a terminal patient in Prague, tries to convince Iris that Miss Froy is really a figment of her imagination. Is it possible Iris created her, that she is the result of her bump on the head? Or perhaps, considering those upcoming nuptials with an aristocrat in England, Iris is simply preoccupied. Could she be distracting herself, the better to ignore her dread? She admits to not loving him, but her father wants to put his coat of arms next to the company name.
For a while, Hitchcock teases us with the possibility that Miss Froy is indeed a figment of Iris’ mind. During the first scene, which takes place in the hotel lobby, she enters, briefly interacts with the hotel clerk, and then exits through the front door. Hardly anybody seems to notice her. Stranger still, Hitchcock has one of his technicians—probably sound man Sydney Wiles—turn off the boom mikes so that the music and some select noises overlap any spoken dialogue.
The effect is slightly eerie; and the director, superlative craftsman that he was, orders the actors to stay relatively still until Miss Froy leaves. Ultimately, he manipulates image and sound to completely undercut Dame Whitty’s presence. But something about her lingers in the moments after she leaves, like the remnants of a faded memory. Then the rest of the actors start moving, more sounds appear on the audio track, characters recite their lines, and things pick up.
Meanwhile, any doubts we may have about the disappeared woman’s nature only persist to a certain point, then the race to find her begins. Naturally, villains toss in a few unexpected curves to throw off the amateur sleuths, such as a doppelganger for Miss Froy. While her facial features don’t bear much resemblance, she wears a similarly colored outfit, and claims to be the one who helped Iris earlier. Iris insists that this newly emerged woman is not her friend. However, the train has yet to take on new passengers, save for the doctor’s patient in a gurney, and the manifest shows the same number of people.
So if the woman isn’t Miss Froy, why does she pretend that she is? And how did she manage to board the train in the first place, without either Iris or Gilbert spotting her? This is the most satisfying mind-bender in the entire movie, but to Hitchcock’s credit, he finds a way to explain it satisfactorily.
Another thing he does well is portray Iris and Gilbert as “everyman” heroes. Regular joes can show formidable intelligence, but the brain must serve as their primary weapon. The director seems to understand this; whenever the two stars have to get physical, Hitchcock boxes out the action in a clumsy, slapsticky, but believable way. If an exception exists, it is the sequence towards the end, when Gilbert climbs out the window and makes his way along the side of the train.
The camera shoots him from outside the locomotive. As he dangles between two windows, an oncoming train nearly smashes him. While this seems a bit forced, given that Redgrave’s character is primarily funny and romantic, one cannot argue that the resulting shot is a jolter. Hitchcock, who would create some truly memorable compositions and juxtapositions in future, better movies—a few of which also involved trains—was definitely on the right track this time.
“We’re not in England now.”
Indeed, the characters in “The Lady Vanishes” have boarded a train to Hitchcock-land. Here, unspeakable acts occur in places associated with “safe” feelings by the audience. Remember “Psycho,” and the notorious scene of Janet Leigh getting stabbed in the shower? It took theater audiences completely by surprise, since no one expected such a deed to occur in a clean bathroom setting. It’s not exactly a dark alleyway, where people get killed all the time.
Throughout his career, the effectiveness of Hitchcock’s suspense movies have had to do with confounding the audience’s expectations. The same way that the virginal white porcelain of the Bates motel held a certain unspoiled purity, the passenger rail in “The Lady Vanishes” gives off a cozy, hospitable vibe. In a place such as this, travelers and business-people enjoy comforts resembling home. One can purchase a drawing room with cushioned seats, or drink hot tea in the dining car. And someone like Miss Froy, travelling across the European continent, regularly finds yourself in the company of fellow British citizens.
As viewers, we are meant to ask ourselves, How can someone disappear from a place like this? Especially considering the presence of other subjects of the crown, who are also away from the sovereign state. One would expect countrymen to look out for one another, that nothing nefarious could befall an Englishwoman in the near-constant presence of her own brethren.
But herein lies much of the “The Lady Vanishes”’ humor: How these British civilians—even when they’re no longer in England—expect a certain standard of decorum to be upheld. As a result of their stiff upper lips, Miss Froy’s disappearance doesn’t arouse any outrage. After all, why should they waste their rancor on something that simply cannot happen to an English citizen? Like twits, they assume she must not be real, otherwise she would be taking her tea in the dining car, not causing a ruckus throughout the train.
This type of naivete especially applies to the pair of cricket enthusiasts, who hide in their cabin to avoid being questioned by Iris. These two played no part in the actual scheme to disappear the lady. However, they fear any answers they give will only lead to further inquiry, which might prevent them from reaching their cricket match.
Therefore, even though they had a conversation with Miss Froy, they agree with the brain doctor and Iris’ cabin mates, who say the missing woman must be a figment of the poor girl’s imagination. As one of the gentlemen puts it, “An Englishwoman doesn’t just disappear into thin air.” Indeed, Miss Froy did not. However, these two cricket buffs have the equation all wrong: it is possible for Miss Froy to be missing, and still be an actual person; it is possible for Miss Froy to be an Englishwoman, and to have disappeared from the train. But neither gentleman believes that one or the other condition can exist independently.
*** Warning! The following contains information of a SPOILOUS nature! *** Even after the vanished lady returns, they refuse to accept what happened to her. Iris and Gilbert try to explain, and the old woman herself clearly looks worked over. But their reply is fairly dismissive. “My dear chap, you must have gotten the wrong end of the stick somewhere,” says one.
“Yes, these things just don’t happen,” says the other.
This misguided sense of immunity nearly leads to comic tragedy. Prior to the film’s climactic scene, Gilbert tries to warn everyone in the dining car that they have been detached from the rest of the train, and are now headed towards a trap. But even the most obvious evidence, such as how the car is rolling backward in the direction they just came from, fails to have an effect. “There’s nothing left of the train beyond the sleeping car,” Gilbert insists.
“There must be,” one of the cricket enthusiasts replies. “Our bags are in the first class carriage.”
Overall rating: **** (out of ****)
Labels: ****, 1938, Alfred Hitchcock
posted by Phil | 3:06 PM
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