The Lady Vanishes

The Lady Vanishes 1938 U.K. (97 minutes) directed by Alfred Hitchcock; written by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder; cinematography by Jack E. Cox; edited by R. E. Dearing; continuity by Alma Reville.

Alfred Hitchcock’s deftly-told The Lady Vanishes spins a serious spy thriller from a romantic comedy set in Bandrika, a fictional Central European country on the periphery of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The film is a gem, balancing Hitchcock’s sophisticated visual narrative sense with a comically-inspired Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder screenplay. Gilliat and Launder parody Britons abroad in an age when the sun never set on the British Empire. They get maximum effect from an ensemble of self-absorbed, spoiled Britons grousing about the locals and services in a “third rate” Balkan dictatorship.

Hitchcock’s hallmark as a director is his shots, and this is the best of his British films. What distinguishes his style from his British and American contemporaries is that he appears to have conceived of montage as a composition of shots in a manner closer to the early Germans and Russians—not simply editing, but constructing shots to tell a story in pictures. (He worked at UFA in Berlin briefly in the mid-1920s and was on the set with F.W. Murnau while he was shooting Der Letzte Mann—The Last Laugh.) Nor is this just an effect: this distinctive sensibility comes through just as strongly in his later Hollywood color films. 

In this story, an avalanche strands a group of international railway passengers overnight in a hotel in Bandrika. Their journey resumes the next morning. Miss Froy (Dame May Whitty), an older Englishwoman returning to Britain after working six years in Bandrika as a governess, befriends Iris Henderson (Margaret Lockwood), a wealthy young Englishwoman returning to London to be married. Miss Froy disappears on the train. Iris, suspecting foul play, enlists the help of the skeptical but attracted Gilbert Redman (Michael Redgrave, in his first leading role), a young Cambridge-educated Anglo-Irish musical ethnologist doing field research in Bandrika. The pair uncover an elaborate plot.

The story is set squarely in the political reality of the day. Nazi Germany was on the move. The film was released in August 1938, five months after Adolf Hitler annexed Austria and a month before Neville Chamberlain’s “Peace in our time” Munich Agreement attempted to appease Hitler by “trading” his annexation of the Czech Sudetenland for peace with Britain and France.

However, the film’s main plot is a romantic comedy between unlikes Iris and Gilbert. Gilliat and Launder gin up the comedy, using pairs to play on stereotypes of both Britons and “continentals”.

Iris’s friends Blanche (Googie Withers) and Julie (Sally Stewart) are privileged Englishwomen having fun in Bandrika, trying to talk Iris out of marrying what they call her “blue-blooded cheque chaser”.

Charters (Basil Radford) and Caldicott (Naunton Wayne) are “Cricket, man! Cricket!” public school old boys bent on getting back to England for a test match between England and Australia. Audiences enjoyed these two so much that Gilliat and Launder reprised the same actors in these roles in several other films.

Mr. Todhunter (Cecil Parker) is a London barrister nervous about appearances because he is on the shortlist for a judgeship; his “Mrs.” (Linden Travers) is given in quotes in the credits because the couple, each married to someone else, are having an affair. “Mrs.” chides Todhunter that his ardor has cooled since “Paris last autumn”, frequently piquing his hypocrisy and provoking pusillanimous evasions. “The law, like Caesar's wife, must be above all suspicion,” Todhunter instructs his mistress, to which she replies, “Even when the law spends six weeks with Caesar's wife?”

And the Hotel Manager (Emile Boreo) and Anna (Kathleen Tremaine), a maid, as well as other hotel staff, chirp happily in Bandrikan, a made-up local language that sounds vaguely Balkan Slavic but is nothing but impertinent babytalk to the impatient Britons. Boreo, who also slips in an “Oy vey iz mir”, was born in Poland in 1885 and had an American stage background.

And then there is the pleasant little old lady who, “following the footsteps” of her aged parents, drinks only Harriman’s Herbal Tea. Miss Froy is not self-absorbed. She is at home in her surroundings, loves the local music, speaks the language, and says that “spy” is “such a grim word”.

Miss Froy also is a foil for Charters and Caldicott, repeatedly and innocently putting them out. In the beginning, we see the two men struggle with a hotel door a cold gust blows open; once closed, the door opens again to introduce Miss Froy. Another time, Miss Froy interrupts Charters, engaged in using sugar cubes to illustrate an elaborate cricket play to Caldicott, to ask him for the sugar for tea.

At a meal with Charters and Caldicott between these incidents, Miss Froy responds to Charters’s grousing about Bandrika by saying: “Everyone sings here. The people are just like happy children, with laughter on their lips and music in their hearts.”

“It's not reflected in their politics, is it?” Charters says.

“I never think you should judge any country by its politics. After all, we English are quite honest by nature, aren't we?” Miss Froy sweetly replies. 

In tune with the politics of the day, the “bad guys” in this film either are Italian or speak with German accents: Signor Doppo (Philip Leaver), Dr. Egon Hartz (Paul Lukas), Baroness Athona (Mary Clare). They must prevent sensitive diplomatic information from leaving the country. They mean serious business.

But at long last the honest English pull together and win the day—minus one appeaser. Hitchcock passes in the crowd at Victoria Station. Iris eludes her “blue-blooded cheque chaser”. And the test match at Manchester was called due to rain.