Interesteg
What makes it different from others?
Lucybespro
It is a performances centric movie
bbmtwist
There's little comment one can add to the IMDb roster about Hitchcock's most polished and professional UK film, the second to last before his American career began.The story, despite its seemingly claustrophobic setting aboard a moving train, never lags, and is always intriguing and interesting. As the layers are pulled away and the plotting revealed, the intensity only increases. All the players are spot on with their performances and Hitchcock's direction is assured and intense, moving things along at a brisk pace and deftly balancing humor and drama.Margaret Lockwood, Michael Redgrave and Dame May Witty are a superb trio in the leads, with excellent character performances. Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne provide interest as a seemingly gay couple on their way to cricket finals. The espionage background, with its leader so well played by the suave Paul Lukas, is never identified, but is so clearly meant to be Nazi- oriented, that it gives a particular urgency to the film within its time period.There are only a few Hitchcockian moments: a montage of eyes in the heroine's vision directly after she receives the blow on the head meant for Miss Froy; the superimposition of Froy's face on each of the faces of those denying her existence, in a rapid montage from the heroine's point of view; the revelation of the Harriman's tea carton against the train window at a crucial moment in the hero's wavering belief in the truth of the heroine's story; the name written on the train window above the tea table; the entirely realistic and unpolished struggle in the baggage car – all delightful and wonderfully engaging bits of cinematography and editing.My print ran 95 minutes. It is to be recommended, along with THE 39 STEPS, as Hitchcock's best UK film. He deservedly won the fourth annual New York Film Critic's Best Director Award for THE LADY VANISHES, bringing him to the attention of David O. Selznick and the Hollywood contract, where he would provide his best work.
John Brooks
Hitchcock directs this very originally and interestingly written motion picture adaptation of a book and all in all this is a very entertaining train ride, with bumps along the road both literally and figuratively, and an ability to keep the viewer constantly interested and genuinely intrigued as to what is actually going on. We're given a host of twists and turns and the development never ceases to be highly dynamic, while the acting is very good with notably the two main and the doctor characters, the dialog as always in Hitchcock films of very sound quality, and it seems just about the right length - such films turn dull after too many twists and lingering plot.The only concern one may have with this is that towards the last quarter of the film, although it's all innate to the storyline the final act resembles very little of what's been going on for the whole bulk of the film and this sort of venturing outside the atmosphere worked so hard to set initially, if one considers the name of the film, the mystery etc... it could feel a bit like this train has gone off track, despite the coherence in story, the atmosphere certainly borrows another path perhaps a bit too different.7.5/8ish.
grantss
Good Hitchcock thriller. A young woman is travelling through continental Europe on a train when she realises that an elderly lady appears to have vanished from the train.Intriguing plot, though gets too convoluted towards the end, and the final scene is rather tame and trite. Perfectly paced, Hitchcock gives you a thorough introduction to the main characters before spinning his web of intrigue. For a thriller, the mood is actually quite light and humorous, rather than dark and edgy, which helps the movie speed along.Good performances all round. Michael Redgrave and Margaret Lockwood are excellent in the lead roles.
Spondonman
With the occasional setback each succeeding film Alfred Hitchcock made until the last couple seemed to get better in all departments, but especially technically. This was one of his quintessentially British films primitively but cheerfully made for 1930's British audiences to be seen and enjoyed the once, the entire industry still being on an improving curve. It's not likely cricket will ever be truly understood by the wider American audience but it was the film which proved to be Hitchcock's big break, only one more to go before Hollywood and its opportunities and coffers beckoned.Young woman Margaret Lockwood on her way to be married befriends an elderly lady Miss Froy on a European train. The only trouble is after waking up she finds Miss Froy has vanished apparently along with the very memory of her existence; everyone is seemingly against her. However, dashing young Michael Redgrave gets interested and lends his exuberant support in trying to get to the bottom of the mystery. It's completely disarmingly quaint and I've always forgiven the convoluted childishness of the plot: Lockwood & Redgrave are up against some more Johnny Foreigner's who will Stop At Nothing – except to kill them to shut them up and push them off the train and so end their problems; the greasy baddie must have awkwardly slid out of the trick cabinet silently behind them and could've polished them off and so end his problems; let's all get off the stationary train have a desultory gun battle from the woods to give the goodies a chance to get away and so end their problems. The model shots are indeed laughable, but perhaps more so by the same people who are in open-jawed admiration of todays reliance on incessant cgi cartoonery. Recognising these points and others has never lessened the entertainment value of this little movie for me, I gladly bought a ticket too to see this journey through to the end. Hitch quite rightly continually satirised British politicians' intelligence and integrity, and presciently has the only philandering appeaser on board shot dead. His usual voyeuristic attitude in the depiction of women was present, although on a side note I wonder even for 1938 did he seriously believe in Charters' statement "People don't go around tying up nuns".Is it never considered why Redgrave and Lockwood would behave so childishly and so dense? Could it be because they merely more closely represented the ordinary person, untrammelled with the cynicism and seediness so beloved by all of us nowadays. There are still millions of such people walking the streets, it's just that they're not represented as worthy of any interest any more by our artistic Betters. Hitch was always good at that – remember the detective's kindergarten-type end speech in Shadow Of A Doubt for instance.Many members of the cast would go on to make many items worthy and arty, but the chances are they'll all be ultimately remembered mainly for this fast moving but perfectly paced inconsequential entertainment. Still incredible that this was so enjoyable and the 1979 remake was so dire – neither was meant to be watched twice or generations later, Hitchcock's will be though. And like Miss Froy I too do hope and pray that we shall all meet again, one day.
