Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 8-June-03
Spoiler Rating: Medium

The Lady Vanishes (1938)

"The Lady Vanishes" may have been the first Alfred Hitchcock movie I ever saw, and over the years it has become one of my favorites. The interesting thing is that each time I watch it I appreciate something different, depending on my age at the time. When I was a kid, I enjoyed the sensation of intrigue derived from the mysterious details of the plot and the "exotic" European characters and location. As a teenager, I was drawn to the more dynamic aspects of the film, its comedy, action, and suspense. When I was a young adult, my eyes were opened to the fact that Michael Redgrave, as the movie's hero, was the cutest floppy haired, Cambridge-educated ethnomusicologist I had ever seen. During my last viewing, I had a startling moment of "duh!" when I realized that the movie is a thinly veiled exhortation to the British people to rise up against the growing menace of Nazi Germany and its Italian allies. Looking back, what I admire most about "The Lady Vanishes" is the richness of it, how it manages to be so many engaging things all at once while still feeling completely seamless.

The missing person of the title is Miss Froy (Dame May Whitty), a kindly English spinster who, at the beginning of the film, is stranded for the night at an alpine hotel along with a large crowd of French, Italian, German, and British travelers. The extended opening sequence serves to highlight the closeness of European nations in addition to introducing Miss Froy and the other major players in the tale. These include an attractive young woman named Iris (Margaret Lockwood), who is enjoying one last holiday before entering a loveless marriage; a hilarious pair of tweedy, pipe-smoking, uber-British gents eager to get home for a cricket match; a stuffy barrister and his mistress, who are returning from an adulterous vacation; and a vivacious collector of folk music named Gilbert (Redgrave), whose hostile first encounter with Iris sets up their sexual and romantic tension in tried and true movie style. The fun really begins when everyone sets off on the same train the next morning, and Iris suffers a hard knock on the head just before boarding. Miss Froy resuscitates her with friendly chat and a cup of tea, but when Iris wakes up from her subsequent nap, the old lady is nowhere to be found. What's worse, all of the other passengers on the train swear they never saw her and have no idea whom Iris is talking about.

Since the camera has followed Iris since she boarded the train, the viewer knows she is not hallucinating and can only share her frustration and bewilderment, which are enhanced by the narrow environment to which she is confined. But unlike some of Hitchcock's later films, the suspense here is used more as a relish than the main meal, and things soon take a lighter turn when Iris runs into Gilbert. Good-natured, smart, energetic, and funny, Gilbert is exactly the type of person you would want to run into if your whole world turned upside-down ("Just make your mind a complete blank," he advises her with a smile, "Watch me, you can't go wrong."). He offers Iris both a welcomed relief from panic and additional authority for pursuing the mystery, and together they make headway despite the distracting efforts of an oily German doctor (Paul Lukas) and a threatening Italian magician. As they slowly inch closer to the truth, which is of major international import, they also uncover the better natures of their fellow British passengers and the affections of one other.

Gilbert and Iris are probably Hitchcock's most amiable and uncomplicated protagonists, so most of the psychological drama revolves around the secondary characters. It's interesting to watch the British citizens on the train unwittingly conspire against Miss Froy because of petty personal reasons, until they slowly cast aside their desire not to get involved and accept that what threatens one of them threatens them all. From then on, their individual natures are subsumed in a single, unified British character which they all represent. Though he hadn't yet come to America, Hitchcock indulges in some very overt ribbing of the aloof, supercilious, blue-blooded British persona throughout most of "The Lady Vanishes," mostly through the comic cricket duo. This adds even more impact to the fact that when the chips are really down (not a spot of malt vinegar in sight), all but one of the Queen's subjects comport themselves in jolly good, in fact smashingly heroic fashion.

But while there's a definite large-scale message to the film, it doesn't distract from the more intimate details of the mystery. In fact, it adds another dimension to the themes of the whole story: cooperation and togetherness. From the personal romance to the cloak-and-dagger conspiracy, "The Lady Vanishes" is about people with a common bond looking out for each other. Consequently, its many elements, all of which are wonderfully executed, make for a cohesive and rich experience.

Copyright © 2003 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.