‘My father always taught me, never desert a lady in trouble…’
Alfred Hitchcock’s film career was so disparate and long-lasting that it contains numerous phases. The Lady Vanishes was Hitch’s penultimate film before moving from London to Hollywood (the last one being Jamaica Inn) and in many ways, it feels like the end of the second phase of Hitchcock’s directing career (the first phase being his early silent films). While it isn’t as spellbinding as his best work, The Lady Vanishes is still a captivating and timeless thriller…
Iris Henderson (Margaret Lockwood) joins forces with a dapper stranger (Michael Redgrave) after she becomes certain that one of the other passengers aboard the train, an elderly lady, has gone missing.
Much of Hitch’s director trademarks are already on display here. Queer-coded characters (two English gentlemen who just want to watch the cricket), the Maguffin (the missing woman) and a thriller with a twist. The film also boasts an excellent performance by Redgrave (I’d love to go for a glass of port with Redgrave’s Gilbert) and Lockwood, who acted steadily for decades after this, has great fun pretending that she isn’t in love with Redgrave from the moment their eyes first meet.
The Lady Vanishes is a fast-paced, claustrophobic thriller. Yes, it feels old-fashioned in places now (although it’s helped on that front by the lack of a score, so many films from this era are aged by their sweeping, orchestral scores), but this is a film that is almost 90 years old and it’s still captivating even all these years later.
