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The Lady Vanishes (1938 film)
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The Lady Vanishes is a thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and adapted by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder from the novel The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White. 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 's Jamaica Inn came before he moved to Hollywood and began making films there for David O. Selznick, starting with Rebecca, released in .
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Encyclopedia
The Lady Vanishes is a thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and adapted by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder from the novel The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White. 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 's Jamaica Inn came before he moved to Hollywood and began making films there for David O. Selznick, starting with Rebecca, released in . It was the great success of The Lady Vanishes, after a slump of three films that were not hits, that made it possible for Hitchcock to negotiate a very good deal to work in the States.
A remake, also entitled The Lady Vanishes, was made in .
Plot summary
In Bandrika, a fictional country in an "uncivilised" region of immediately pre-World War II Central Europe, a motley group of travellers eager to return to England is delayed by an avalanche that has blocked the railway tracks. Among the train's 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 Iris reawakens, the governess has vanished, and she 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. 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
Cast notes:
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.
The film was named "Best Picture of 1938" by the New York Times, and Alfred Hitchcock received the 1939 New York Film Critics Circle Award for "Best Director".
Miscellany
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.
External links
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