Day 46: The Lady Vanishes (1938)

Another Hitchcock and one that I own on Criterion, so got to cross two things off my list today. Only one more Hitchcock British film left before the jump to Hollywood. Of all Hitchcock's films so far, this and The 39 Steps, are my favourite. When this opened in 1938 in Britain, it became the most successful film aired in Britain up to that point.

Prior to the outbreak of war, a woman is traveling through a European country by train headed back to England when she notices an old woman passenger has gone missing, but no one believes her. In a race against time, Iris, the young woman, must convince others that she isn't hallucinating and find the missing woman before it's too late. This may sound like a more recent film, the 2005 film Flightplan starring Jodie Foster, which uses a lot of elements from this film.

One of the highlights of the film was that Charters and Caldicott, two British travelers obsessed with cricket, whom I recently saw in Night Train to Munich are also in this film. In fact, they first appeared in this film, and their popular success allowed them to be brought back in two other films (one being Night Train). They play the same characters and have a fairly large role in both films - in both films they are passengers on the train who are trying to return to England from an enemy state right before the outbreak of war and are not willing to intervene in anything they believe will slow their return to England. They are quite comical and I can easilyl see why they got picked up to be used again in other films.

This penultimate British film by Hitchcock is another fluff comedy piece that is based on the absurd, much unlike his later more serious American films, but it is a fun film that is well done. Hitchcock manages to balance suspense and comedy perfectly, never allowing one to becoming too overbearing for the other. The film will leave you guessing until the end, laughing all the while.