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The Lady Vanishes

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The Lady Vanishes
File:Lady moviep.jpg
original movie poster
Directed byAlfred Hitchcock
Written byEthel Lina White (novel)
Sidney Gilliat
Frank Launder
Alma Reville (continuity)
Produced byEdward Black (uncredited)
StarringMargaret Lockwood
Michael Redgrave
Paul Lukas
Dame May Whitty
CinematographyJack E. Cox
Edited byR. E. Dearing
Music byLouis Levy
Charles Williams
Cecil Milner
(all uncredited)
Distributed byGaumont British Films
MGM
20th-Century Fox (US)
Release date
November 1, Template:Fy (US)
Running time
97 minutes
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageTransclusion error: {{En}} is only for use in File namespace. Use {{langx|en}} or {{in lang|en}} instead.

The Lady Vanishes (Template:Fy) is a thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and adapted by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder from the Template:Lty novel The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White[1]. It stars Margaret Lockwood, Michael Redgrave, Paul Lukas and Dame May Whitty, and features Cecil Parker, Linden Travers, Naunton Wayne, Basil Radford, Mary Clare, Googie Withers, Catherine Lacey, and Sally Stewart.

The Lady Vanishes was one of Hitchock's last films to be made in the U.K. – only Template:Fy's Jamaica Inn came before he moved to Hollywood and began making films for David O. Selznick there with Rebecca, released in Template:Fy.[2][3] It was the success of The Lady Vanishes, after a slump of three films that were not hits,[4] that made it possible for Hitchcock to negotiate a very good deal to work in the States.[5]

A remake, also entitled The Lady Vanishes, was made in Template:Fy.


Plot

File:Redgrave&Lockwood.JPG
Michael Redgrave and Margaret Lockwood

In Bandrika, a fictional country in an "uncivilized" region of immediately pre-World War II Central Europe,[6] 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 get married, and Miss Froy (May Whitty), an elderly lady who has worked some years abroad as a governess.

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. The other English travelers 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.[7] 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 Wheel Spins, Miss Froy really is an innocent old lady looking forward to seeing her octogenarian parents; she is abducted because she knows something (without realising its significance) that would cause trouble for the local authorities if it came out. Iris' mental confusion is due to sunstroke, not a blow to the head. In White's novel, the wheel keeps spinning: the train never stops, and there is no final shootout. Additionally, the supporting cast of English people differs somewhat between the novel and the film; for instance, 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 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. The characters Charters and Caldicott were created for the film, and do not appear in the novel.

The story was used again in the series Alfred Hitchcock Presents, in the episode "Into Thin Air".

Cast

File:Lady Vanishes 1938 cast.jpg
Basil Radford, Michael Redgrave, Margaret Lockwood and Dame May Whitty


Cast notes:

Production

The Lady Vanishes was originally called The Lost Lady, and young American director Roy William Neill was assigned by producer Edward Black to make it. A crew was dispatched to Yugoslavia to do background shots, but when the Yugoslavia police accidentally discovered that they were not well-portrayed in the script, they kicked the crew out of the country, and Black scrapped the project. A year later, Hitchcock couldn't come up with a property to direct to fulfill his contract with Black, so he accepted when Black offered The Lost Lady to him. Hitchcock worked with the writers to make some changes to tighten up the opening and ending of the story, but otherwise the script did not change much.[5]

At first, Hitchcock considered Lili Palmer for the female lede, but went instead with Maragret Lockwood, who was at the time relatively known. Lockwood was attracted to the heroines of Ethel Lina White's stories, and accepted the role. Michael Redgrave was also unknown to the cinema audience, but was a rising stage star at the time. He was reluctant to leave the stage to do the film, but was convinced by John Gielgud to do so. As it happened, the film, Redgrave's first leading role, made him an international star.[5]

This film, which was shot in Islington,[8] was the first to be made under an agreement between Gaumont-British and MGM, in which Gaumont provided MGM with some of their Gainsborough films for release in the U.K., for which MGM would pay half the production costs if MGM decided to release the film in the U.S. In the case of The Lady Vanishes, however, 20th Century-Fox did the American release.[9]

Response

When The Lady Vanishes opened in the U.K. it was an immediate hit, becoming the most successful British film to that date. It was also very successful when it opened in New York.[5]

Awards and honors

Miscellany

References

Notes

  1. ^ This novel was serialised in 6 weekly 15 minute parts, read by Brenda Blethyn, from 7 March 2008 on BBC Radio 2.
  2. ^ Alfred Hitchcock at IMDb
  3. ^ Brenner, Paul Overview (Allmovie)
  4. ^ Hanley, Brendon "The Lady Vanishes" (Allmovie review)
  5. ^ a b c d e f Miller, Frank "The Lady Vanishes" (TCM article)
  6. ^ 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. Three of the train stations seen or mentioned within the country are "Zolnay," "Dravka," and "Morsken".
  7. ^ 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.
  8. ^ TCM Overview
  9. ^ TCM Notes
  10. ^ Allmovie Awards
  11. ^ IMDB Awards
  12. ^ a b TCM Trivia

Bibliography

  • Vermilye, Jerry. The Great British Films, pp.42-44. Citadel Press, 1978. ISBN 080650661X

Further reading

  • Rich, Nataniel. The Lady Vanishes: Hitchcock's first Hitchcock film, Slate, Dec. 4, 2007.


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