The Lady Vanishes

The Lady Vanishes
The Lady Vanishes
	File:Lady moviep.jpg Original movie poster
Directed by	Alfred Hitchcock
Written by	Sidney Gilliat; Frank Launder; Ethel Lina White (novel)
Produced by	Edward Black (uncredited) for Gaumont British Films
Starring	Margaret Lockwood; Michael Redgrave; Paul Lukas; Dame May Whitty; Cecil Parker; Linden Travers; Naunton Wayne; Basil Radford; Mary Clare; Philip Leaver; Catherine Lacey; Googie Withers
Cinematography	Jack E. Cox
Edited by	R. E. Dearing
Music by	Louis Levy; Charles Williams; (both uncredited)
Distributed by	Gaumont British Films (original UK distributor) MGM (UK)
Release dates	November 1, 1938; December 25, 1938
Running time	97 min
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English

The Lady Vanishes (1938) is a film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Originally planned as The Lost Lady and to have been directed by Roy William Neill, it was adapted by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder from the novel The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White^[1]. It starred Margaret Lockwood, Michael Redgrave and Dame May Whitty. Also in the cast were Paul Lukas, Cecil Parker, Linden Travers, Naunton Wayne, Basil Radford, Mary Clare, Googie Withers, Catherine Lacey, and Sally Stewart.

A remake, also entitled The Lady Vanishes, was made in 1979.

Synopsis

In Bandrika, a fictional country in an "uncivilized" region of immediately pre-World War II Western Europe,^[2] a motley group of travellers eager to return to England is delayed by an avalanche that has blocked the railway tracks. Among the train passengers are Gilbert (Michael Redgrave), a young musicologist who has been studying the folk songs of the region, Iris (Margaret Lockwood), a young woman of independent means who has spent a holiday with some friends, but is now returning home to be betrothed, and Miss Froy (May Whitty), an elderly lady who has worked some years abroad as a governess.

File:Redgrave&Lockwood.JPG

Michael Redgrave and Margaret Lockwood

When the train resumes its journey, Iris and Miss Froy become acquainted, while the remaining passengers in the compartment appear not to understand a word of English. Iris lapses into unconsciousness (the result of an earlier encounter with a falling flowerpot meant for Miss Froy). When she reawakens, the governess has vanished. Iris is shocked to learn that the other passengers claim Miss Froy never existed. Even the other English travellers deny ever seeing her, for their own reasons.

Fellow passenger Doctor Egon Hartz (Paul Lukas) convinces everyone that she must be hallucinating due to her accident. Undaunted, Iris starts to investigate, joined only by a skeptical Gilbert, with whom she eventually falls in love. They discover that Miss Froy is being held prisoner in a sealed-off compartment supposedly occupied by a seriously ill patient being transported to an operation. They manage to free her, but the train is diverted to a side track, where a shootout ensues. Miss Froy intimates to Gilbert and Iris that she is in fact a British spy assigned to deliver some vital information (the famous Hitchcock MacGuffin) to the Foreign Office in London; after entrusting her message, encoded in a folk song, to Gilbert, she flees under cover of the shootout.

After managing to restart the train and escape, Gilbert and Iris return to London.^[3] At the Foreign Office, Gilbert, driven to joyful distraction when Iris accepts his marriage proposal, forgets the tune. Just as it appears the message has been lost, the coded folk song is heard in the background. Fortunately, Miss Froy has also made good her escape and is seen playing the song on a piano.

Adaptation

The plot of Hitchcock's film differs considerably from White's novel. In The Lady Vanishes, Miss Froy really does seem to be an innocent old lady looking forward to seeing her octogenarian parents. Only after it is revealed that Miss Froy is a spy who is carrying a secret message encrypted in musical notes does it become clear that the murdered singer at the beginning of the movie was most likely conveying the message to her. In White's novel, the wheel keeps spinning: the train never stops, and there is no final shootout. Additionally, in the novel, the Gilbert character is Max Hare, a young English engineer (described as "untidy and with a rebellious tuft of hair", and in a similarly chirpy vein to Gilbert) building a dam in the Bandrikan hills who knows the local language, and there is also a modern-languages professor character who acts as Iris's and Max's interpreter who does not appear in the film. Hitchcock used the story again in the series Alfred Hitchcock Presents in the episode "Into Thin Air".

Cultural references

Gilbert refers to driving "a miniature [steam] engine on the Dymchurch line", referring to the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway.
Gilbert impersonates Sherlock Holmes and Will Hay in one scene.

References in later film

The film was the first appearance of the comedy double-act Charters and Caldicott (played by Naunton Wayne and Basil Radford). The first of these characters' many recurrences was in Night Train to Munich.
The film Flightplan (2005) has some similarities to this movie, although the filmmakers deny it was an influence.

References

^ This novel was serialised in 6 weekly 15 minute parts, read by Brenda Blethyn, from 7 March 2008 on BBC Radio 2.
^ It has often been wrongly stated that the action of the movie is set in Nazi-controlled Austria, though Bandrika may be seen as a substitute for such. Bandrika's fictitious language has similarities to Italian, Hungarian and German.
^ Nothing of the characters' journey between the shootout and Victoria station appears, though their arrival at Victoria shows that they have taken the boat-train from Calais to Dover Harbour railway station, whose London terminus was Victoria. The Victoria scene also includes Hitchcock's cameo role in the film, smoking a cigarette.

Bibliography

The Great British Films, pp42-44, Jerry Vermilye, 1978, Citadel Press, ISBN 080650661X

External links

[1] This novel was serialised in 6 weekly 15 minute parts, read by Brenda Blethyn, from 7 March 2008 on BBC Radio 2.

[2] It has often been wrongly stated that the action of the movie is set in Nazi-controlled Austria, though Bandrika may be seen as a substitute for such. Bandrika's fictitious language has similarities to Italian, Hungarian and German.

[3] Nothing of the characters' journey between the shootout and Victoria station appears, though their arrival at Victoria shows that they have taken the boat-train from Calais to Dover Harbour railway station, whose London terminus was Victoria. The Victoria scene also includes Hitchcock's cameo role in the film, smoking a cigarette.

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