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CRITERION REVIEW #3 THE LADY VANISHES (dir. Alfred Hitchcock) 1938   THE FILM: The Lady Vanishes is pretty much a one-stop shop for everything that I love about Alfred Hitchcock: It’s got a crackling mystery, a masterful sense of suspense, an impish ear fur humor, and — most importantly — a luminous brunette (Margaret Lockwood). It was the last film Hitchcock made before he packed up and left England for Hollywood, and to my mind it was also the best.  For the first thirty minutes of The Lady Vanishes, the film’s tone is the only mystery in sight, and  it’s not a particularly urgent one, at that. We begin in the backwater country of Bandrika, a fictional European nation that seems to be aligning itself with some sinister forces (the word “Nazi” is never spoken). An avalanche has stranded a train’s worth of passengers in a little mountain inn, and Hitchcock guides us through a fun and frivolous evening with this motley crew of clashing personalities. There’s a brash young musician named Gilbert (Michael Redgrave), a lovely lady en route to meet her sod of a fiancée (Lockwood), two bantering gentleman who care only for critic, and an elderly woman named Miss Froy who we could all swear that we saw. The dialogue is sharp and unexpectedly dirty, and Hitchcock breezes between the rooms with the same false sense of happenstance that Renoir would later patent in The Rules of the Game. The whole set-piece is such a fluid delight that by the time someone gets strangled to death, it almost feels like part of the fun. When Miss Froy disappears from the train the next day and the other passengers all tell Lockwood that she was never onboard in the first place, the mystery is afoot, and the slap-happy opening act is revealed to be a harbinger of grave things to come. Chugging along on the strength of Hitchcock’s most devilish Macguffin that side of North by Northwest, The Lady Vanishes isn’t just a tart little mystery or a masterclass in suspense (although it most certainly both of those things — the fogged window enduring as one of the cinema’s most deviously designed bits of snack-sized dramatic irony), it’s also a massively entertaining portrait of a world in transition (evoking People on Sunday, in some way). When that train pulls out of Bandrika it rolls away from a more innocent time, fixed on a one-way course towards a darker place where evil isn’t a fever-dream but a very real presence. Hitchcock has no sense for cynicism, but The Lady Vanishes rolls towards a reluctant realism, ultimately promising an extraordinary number of murders to come — murders about which the only mystery will be how people didn’t see them coming. It’s no wonder Hitchcock got out of there. THE TRANSFER: Criterion’s Blu-ray of The Lady Vanishes might actually look a little toogood. I mean, it’s one thing to know that Hitchcock is pulling a fake model car through the fake cobbled streets of a fake European country, but in 1080p the illusion is utterly pulverized and the film begins on a needless note of kitsch, as a result. That being said, the transfer’s unrivaled quality begins paying massive dividends shortly thereafter, offering viewers a remarkably clear and consistent image that should play like mana from heaven for Hitchcock purists. And is it just me, or is Margaret Lockwood actually glowing? THE VERDICT: The deluxe DVD edition that Criterion released in 2007 is still a top-notch product and those who own it shouldn’t feel compelled to upgrade unless their completely understandable love of the film beckons them to do so. Folks looking to add this film to their library for the first time should pull the trigger and never look back. CLICK OVER TO MOVIES.COM TO READ REVIEWS OF CRITERION’S COMPLETE DECEMBER SLATE.

CRITERION REVIEW #3 THE LADY VANISHES (dir. Alfred Hitchcock) 1938  

THE FILM: The Lady Vanishes is pretty much a one-stop shop for everything that I love about Alfred Hitchcock: It’s got a crackling mystery, a masterful sense of suspense, an impish ear fur humor, and — most importantly — a luminous brunette (Margaret Lockwood). It was the last film Hitchcock made before he packed up and left England for Hollywood, and to my mind it was also the best. 

For the first thirty minutes of The Lady Vanishes, the film’s tone is the only mystery in sight, and  it’s not a particularly urgent one, at that. We begin in the backwater country of Bandrika, a fictional European nation that seems to be aligning itself with some sinister forces (the word “Nazi” is never spoken). An avalanche has stranded a train’s worth of passengers in a little mountain inn, and Hitchcock guides us through a fun and frivolous evening with this motley crew of clashing personalities. There’s a brash young musician named Gilbert (Michael Redgrave), a lovely lady en route to meet her sod of a fiancée (Lockwood), two bantering gentleman who care only for critic, and an elderly woman named Miss Froy who we could all swear that we saw. The dialogue is sharp and unexpectedly dirty, and Hitchcock breezes between the rooms with the same false sense of happenstance that Renoir would later patent in The Rules of the Game. The whole set-piece is such a fluid delight that by the time someone gets strangled to death, it almost feels like part of the fun. When Miss Froy disappears from the train the next day and the other passengers all tell Lockwood that she was never onboard in the first place, the mystery is afoot, and the slap-happy opening act is revealed to be a harbinger of grave things to come.

Chugging along on the strength of Hitchcock’s most devilish Macguffin that side of North by Northwest, The Lady Vanishes isn’t just a tart little mystery or a masterclass in suspense (although it most certainly both of those things — the fogged window enduring as one of the cinema’s most deviously designed bits of snack-sized dramatic irony), it’s also a massively entertaining portrait of a world in transition (evoking People on Sunday, in some way). When that train pulls out of Bandrika it rolls away from a more innocent time, fixed on a one-way course towards a darker place where evil isn’t a fever-dream but a very real presence. Hitchcock has no sense for cynicism, but The Lady Vanishes rolls towards a reluctant realism, ultimately promising an extraordinary number of murders to come — murders about which the only mystery will be how people didn’t see them coming. It’s no wonder Hitchcock got out of there.

THE TRANSFER: Criterion’s Blu-ray of The Lady Vanishes might actually look a little toogood. I mean, it’s one thing to know that Hitchcock is pulling a fake model car through the fake cobbled streets of a fake European country, but in 1080p the illusion is utterly pulverized and the film begins on a needless note of kitsch, as a result. That being said, the transfer’s unrivaled quality begins paying massive dividends shortly thereafter, offering viewers a remarkably clear and consistent image that should play like mana from heaven for Hitchcock purists. And is it just me, or is Margaret Lockwood actually glowing?

THE VERDICT: The deluxe DVD edition that Criterion released in 2007 is still a top-notch product and those who own it shouldn’t feel compelled to upgrade unless their completely understandable love of the film beckons them to do so. Folks looking to add this film to their library for the first time should pull the trigger and never look back.

CLICK OVER TO MOVIES.COM TO READ REVIEWS OF CRITERION’S COMPLETE DECEMBER SLATE.