Monday, November 19, 2007

THE LADY VANISHES - #3



The term "popcorn movie" is generally applied to films that are entertainment at its most pure. The kind of movies that are full of twists and turns and we dare not look away as we scarf down our popcorn, stuffing our face with fluffy snacks while our eyes are stuffed with movie fun.

Alfred Hitchcock's 1938 British thriller The Lady Vanishes is definitely a popcorn movie. This tightly plotted lark is custom built for suspense. Its charms are simple and true, the very kind of movie folks mean when they say, "They don't make them like that anymore." Though the original Criterion DVD, released in 1998 as the third in their long-running series, has been out of print for some time, The Lady Vanishes has returned at last, spruced up with a new transfer and a second disc of bonus features.

The Lady Vanishes opens in an out-of-the-way European town. An avalanche has stranded a host of travelers at a mountain resort overnight. No trains can leave until morning when all of the snow is cleared. The first twenty-five minutes of Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder's script stays put at the hotel. Hitchcock and his writers are taking their time setting everything up, creating a false sense of security as they introduce the various characters that will become important once the mystery is underway.



Amongst the stranded are Charters and Caldicott (Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne), two cricket-obsessed Englishmen trying to get back to Manchester in time to catch the last match of the season. Also hailing from the British isles is a loving couple (Cecil Parker and Linden Travers) who are married--just not to each other. Elsewhere, there is the spoiled socialite Iris (Margaret Lockwood), who throws her fiancée's money around like it was nothing, making sure she gets whatever she wants with plenty of well-placed bribes. This includes getting Gilbert (Michael Redgrave), a scholar with a yen for folk dancing, thrown out of his room because the dancing he's studying makes too much noise. The two bicker over the situation, but Gilbert's seen the world, he's dealt with the overly privileged before.

And, of course, there is Miss Froy (Dame May Whitty), the kindly governess ready to return home after six years of teaching music to mountain children. She is a kindly old lady, friendly to all, accepting of everything. While the rest of the cast trundle on chasing their own interests, Miss Froy enjoys the simple pleasures of life.

Not all is as it seems, however, and Hitchcock teases us with hints of darker doings. The serenading musician that Miss Froy enjoys under her window gets strangled, his attacker seen only as a sinister shadow. The next morning, when Miss Froy prepares to board the train, someone drops a planter on her. Only, they miss and clock Iris on the head instead. In its way, this mishap is convenient, because when Iris passes out while riding the rails, it gives everyone a convenient excuse to suggest that she's imagining things when she awakes to find Miss Froy gone. The Spanish couple in the travel car with her claim to have never seen an old English woman, as do the porters and everyone else on the train. Iris knows what she saw, but a respected doctor (Paul Lukas) also traveling on that line lends credence to the theory that the concussion has caused Iris to hallucinate. Only Gilbert is willing to listen to her, and that's just barely.

Once Miss Froy is gone, Hitchcock throws The Lady Vanishes into high gear. While he took his sweet time for the first third of the film, it was only to gather steam to really put the pedal to the metal when he started rolling out the thrills. Without the time spent with the other characters, the confusion stacking up around Iris wouldn't have made as much sense or had the same impact. We know that the lovers, for instance, are trying to keep a low profile, and so when Hitchcock has them lie about having seen Miss Froy, the audience is privy to their motives. It means we can believe in Iris, and her frustration is our frustration--perhaps even moreso, since we know how she's being duped.

At least to a degree. Hitchcock keeps the secret of Miss Froy's disappearance constantly out of reach. By the middle of the third act, I was almost convinced he was never going to tell us, and I wasn't sure that it would really matter. The sheer pleasure of The Lady Vanishes is how things continue to tumble down, piling on the obfuscation. The plot is like the avalanche that stranded everyone in the mountains: the more that falls, the more we have to stick with it. Each answered question brings up two more that are unanswered, and as viewers, we're so invested, we're not going anywhere until it's all sorted out.



As the engineer of this train ride, Hitchcock drives The Lady Vanishes with unparalleled glee. The old master took great delight in the silly things people do to preserve their own interests. A pulled shade means a great deal in a Hitchcock movie, because everyone has secrets they want to hide. This makes it all the more easy for the bad guys to keep the cover-up going. If everyone who could expose you is ducking out of the way so they aren't caught for something else, you're in the clear.

The Lady Vanishes is full of black humor and sly winks. Those winks are most evident in the relationship of Iris and Gilbert. Their meeting--her egocentric pouting, his caddish behavior--is a classic movie version of cupid's arrow. You just know these two are heading toward romance. He, of course, sees it long before she does. Why else would he hang around when there is so little evidence on her side? When his intentions do finally become clear, it's a wryly-humorous confession. How can Iris not swoon when Gilbert says he likes her because she reminds him of his father? Here I thought all boys wanted to marry their mother. What would Freud say?

Of course, Hitchcock is as much of a master of having fun with Freud as he is at creating suspense. There's a reason he puts this story on the rails. It's so that train can go through all those tunnels! Though, ironically, one of those times the tunnel not only keeps Gilbert from getting what he wants, but it erases the one clue Iris has managed to find to prove Miss Froy was really there. Surely Hitchcock isn't saying sex will only frustrate us and make us lose clarity?

Then again, such notions are part of the overall Maguffin of filmmaking. Details of this kind keep us entertained and looking in the wrong direction while Hitchcock pulls his tricks off to the other side. Thus, The Lady Vanishes keeps us riveted to the screen, oblivious to any implausibility, and ready to go wherever this locomotive takes us. As with Hitchcock's later and greatest work, it's the kind of movie that just gets more intriguing the more you watch it. Details give way to details, and the more you know, the more fun you have. Popcorn after bucket of popcorn, The Lady Vanishes never dulls.



For technical specs and special features, read the full article at DVD Talk.

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