The only passenger willing to help Iris is dashing, eccentric Gilbert (Michael Redgrave), a folk musicologist she'd fought with at the hotel the night before. Even though he thinks Iris is a "stinker," and doesn't quite believe her story, she is awfully pretty, so he plays detective alongside her and is imaginative enough to be of considerable use. Indeed, together they foil the nefarious plot—without even knowing why anyone would kidnap the harmless old body in the first place—and in the process fall in love. When they reach London at last, Iris spots her fiancé on the platform and promptly dashes into Gilbert's taxi.
It doesn't feel as if the Flightplan team had remade The Lady Vanishes so much as scrubbed it of all extraneous material. It's the extraneous material, however, that makes the original so charming. The romantic comedy is entirely unconnected to the suspense and yet it sets the jaunty tone; it makes international intrigue seem like the kind of party game that's played in pairs to loosen inhibitions, encourage necking. (Like the orange-passing game that Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant play in the nightclub scene in Charade.) There's also a variety of humorous turns, by Dame May Whitty, who combines dottiness and wiliness as the mysterious Miss Froy, Paul Lukas as a maddeningly sympathetic doctor who finds Iris's case very "interesting" and who has an unsatisfactory explanation for everything, and Catherine Lacey as a sketchy nun.
Best of all are Naunton Wayne and Basil Radford as cricket-mad Englishmen who refuse to corroborate Iris's story because they're afraid they'll miss an upcoming match in Manchester if the train is stopped. We see them at the hotel the night before as well, and throughout they are given the most accomplished vaudeville exchanges in all of Hitchcock. They're a comedy team made of two straight men and over half of what they say is mumbled in parody of the archetypal phlegmatic, sexless Englishman. Theirs is a vaudeville two-act with a matte finish rather than a high polish. On the more physical side, one of the conspirators is an Italian magician and in one sequence Iris and Gilbert poke about his props in the luggage compartment.
There's more, too, but this is enough to indicate that The Lady Vanishes is the strongest evidence that Hitchcock understood moviemaking as a composite entertainment, made up of suspense, of course, but also sex and comedy, and the trick was to keep all the Indian clubs in the air. Technically, it's a work of foreboding from the era of Neville Chamberlain and the Munich Pact, but it doesn't play that way. (Except perhaps in a scene that demonstrates the extent to which fascists respect white flags.) The Lady Vanishes is much less urgent than Foreign Correspondent, the sensationally kinetic anti-Nazi melodrama that Hitchcock made in the US in 1940, i.e., before we, in our turn, had inevitably got into the war, already underway in Europe. (Strangely, the only drawback to The Lady Vanishes is Michael Redgrave, for people who come to the movie knowing his later work in Dead of Night (1945), The Browning Version (1951), and The Quiet American (1958). He's a bit too flip, too lightweight here, more like Brian Aherne than himself.)
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Article comments
1 - Aaman
Interesting post, Alan - I didn't see the parallels with The Lady Vanishes until you pointed them out.
Gwyneth is just so Gwyneth
2 - Alan Dale
Hey Aaman,
Thanks for the comment. I think it was the breath on the window that made me realize about The Lady Vanishes. Gave me a point of focus for my carping, anyway.
What's up with Paltrow? This could start a brushfire here on Blogcritics, I suppose, but does anybody like her? I don't know anyone who can stand her and the critics who praise her don't sound like they actually like her but rather like they think they should. She's so classy, and all that. Every time I hear or read something she's said, I can feel my arteries harden. If she were fun to watch I wouldn't care.
3 - Jamal Sledge
Hey Alan,
First, I'd have to say great review, as always. Only if more critics could be as educational and witty as you in their reviews. I agree with Aaman that I didn't see the parallels with "The Lady Vanishes" until you pointed them out as well!
And thank God I'm not the only person who isn't a big fan of Paltrow! It’s really quite disturbing to see critics fawning over her while ignoring how much of a crushing bore she is. And what's more shocking is that so many critics fail to point out that she's nothing but a mechanical actress with no soul. But can you believe she's going to play Marlene Dietrich in an upcoming biopic? Poor Dietrich; she's probably rolling over in her gave as we speak. I always felt if anyone could play Dietrich (or Garbo, for that matter) it should be Uma Thurman.
Anyway, I wanted to know if you've seen Wong Kar-Wai's "2046" yet? I'd love to hear your opinion on that film. I've read nothing but rave reviews and yet I can't understand why. I felt it was masturbatory in style and it just couldn't support the thesis Wong was working with. Maybe I'm wrong. Talk to you soon.
4 - Jamal Sledge
Hey Alan,
First, I'd have to say great review, as always. Only if more critics could be as educational and witty as you in their reviews. I agree with Aaman that I didn't see the parallels with "The Lady Vanishes" until you pointed them out as well!
And thank God I'm not the only person who isn't a big fan of Paltrow! It’s really quite disturbing to see critics fawning over her while ignoring how much of a crushing bore she is. And what's more shocking is that so many critics fail to point out that she's nothing but a mechanical actress with no soul. But can you believe she's going to play Marlene Dietrich in an upcoming biopic? Poor Dietrich; she's probably rolling over in her gave as we speak. I always felt if anyone could play Dietrich (or Garbo, for that matter) it should be Uma Thurman.
Anyway, I wanted to know if you've seen Wong Kar-Wai's "2046" yet? I'd love to hear your opinion on that film. I've read nothing but rave reviews and yet I can't understand why. I felt it was masturbatory in style and it just couldn't support the thesis Wong was working with. Maybe I'm wrong. Talk to you soon.
5 - Alan Dale
Thanks, Jamal, for the compliments.
It really would be infinitely better to have Uma Thurman as Dietrich--esp. in her Henry & June mode. Paltrow is all wrong, but the one ray of hope I got from reading all those horrible interviews is that she said she was producing the movie but not necessarily starring in it.
I did see 2046 and "masturbatory" is a great term for it, except that it makes it sound like it would be fun, which I can't say it was. I'm not a Wong Kar-Wai fan. Gorgeous lulling visual style and no narrative traction. I can't remember the stories or characters or even the stars (or titles). I can't even remember which ones I've seen all the way through and which ones I've walked out on.