270 - The Lady Vanishes, 1938, United Kingdom,

Wednesday, September 27, 2017

270 - The Lady Vanishes, 1938, United Kingdom.  Dir. Alfred Hitchcock.

Bandrika is one of Europe's few undiscovered corners.

One should visit sometime.  If you do, you might get stuck there.  They have avalanches.  The trains cannot run.  One must find a room.

Unfortunately, however, the inn is overcrowded.  They have no rooms.

Good luck to you.

Credits.  The score plays.  Remember the score.  It may just be a clue to the entire movie.

A matte painting.  A miniature model.  A real building.  The inn.

A crowd sits in the lobby.

The Lady appears.  Enters.  Walks down the stairs.  Miss Froy.  An English governess.  She stops.  Places an envelope on the counter.  Digs in her purse for a coin.  Boris, the hotel manager, gives her a stamp.  She pays.  She exits to post her letter.

The wind blows through the open door.

Caldicott and Charters sit by the door.  They will keep trying to close it.  It continually opens.  A recurring sight gag.

"Mrs. Todhunter" sits next to them.  We will later discover that "Mrs. Todhunter" is not Mrs. Todhunter.  She is "Mrs. Todhunter."

The door opens again.

Two men come blustering in with luggage and skis.

A cuckoo clock.  How many cuckoo clocks have you seen in Hitchcock films?  The character that appears in the clock's door is not a cuckoo bird but a soldier.  Blowing a bugle.  Sounding the alarm.

Iris Henderson enters.  With her two girlfriends.  They have rooms.  They know Boris.  Iris seems to hold him in the palm of hands.

Boris speaks Bandrieken.  A language pigeoned together by Hitchcock's screenwriters.  Boris translates his own announcement into Italian, French, German, and English.

There has been an avalanche.  The trains cannot run.  You will have to stay the night.

Too bad for Caldicott and Charters.  They must get home.  England is on the brink.  On the brink of losing a match, anyway.  The men must arrive in time for the Manchester cricket Test Match.

Consider this exchange of dialogue.

Caldicott - I supposed we have to wait here.  If only we hadn't missed that train at Budapest.
Charters - I don't want to rub it in, but if you hadn't insisted on standing up until they finished their national anthem . . .
Caldicott - Yes, but you must show respect, Caldicott.

Standing up.  For the national anthem.  In 1938.

But it goes on.

Caldicott - If I'd known it was going to last 20 minutes--
Charters - Well, it's always been my contention that The Hungarian Rhapsody is not their national anthem.

Charters - In any case, we were the only two standing.
Caldicott - That's true.

These two characters, played by Naunton Wayne and Basil Radford, will provide comic relief throughout the movie.

Mr. and "Mrs." Todhunter request a room.  They could get a double.  He requests two singles.  She is annoyed.  We will discover that he is trying to avoid scandal.  He is a judge.  He will be running for office later.  No one can find out.

Later she will accuse him of being paranoid.  Of thinking that everyone is a an official looking to turn him in.  "You even thought that beggar in Damascus was a barrister in disguise. . . ."  He says he merely mentioned he looked like a judge.  She says he ran the other direction.  He says, "I was looking for a street called 'Straight.'"

Caldicott and Charters request a luxurious suite.  A private suite.  With a bath.  And a shower.  Hot and cold.  Facing the mountain.

The only thing available is the maid's room.  You will have to let her change, but then we will kick her out.  This scenario sets up a series of jokes.

(The incongruity between there being no rooms in the inn and Mr. and "Mrs." Todhunter's having their choice of a double or two singles, is the kind of continuity lapse with which Hitch sometimes does not bother.  We have one joke followed by another joke.  The audience overlooks it.)

The various couples find their places and get settled in.

Caldicott and Charters attempt to have dinner with Miss Froy.  But the kitchen is out of food.

Miss Froy goes to her room.  She opens the French doors to the balcony and listens to a man playing a guitar and singing on the terrace below.  She enjoys the moment.  The night air is warm and cool.  The music rises lovingly to her ears.  She counts out the rhythm.  Begins to hum along.

Suddenly, a raucous noise comes down from above.  A clarinet and foot stomping drown out the guitar.  Folk dancing.

Iris makes a phone call.  Boris is at her service.  He attempts to quiet the noisemakers, but to no avail.

Gilbert, later to be our hero, refuses to relent.  He is writing a book.  Or in his words, he is "putting on record for the benefit of mankind one of the lost dances of Central Europe."

Gilbert insults Boris.

When Boris complains, "You are making too much noise," Gilbert replies, "You dare to call it a noise?  The ancient music with which your peasant ancestors celebrated every wedding for countless generations.  The dance they danced when your father married your mother, always supposing you were born in wedlock, which I doubt."

Gilbert is played by Michael Redgrave.  He got the role when Robert Donat, from The 39 Steps, turned down Hitchcock for the second of four film roles.  Really?

Robert Donat starred in yesterday's film, The 39 Steps, and Hitchcock liked him.  He offered him roles in four more movies, but Donat turned down all of them.  He turned down The Secret Agent so as not to get typecast in thrillers, Sabotage and The Lady Vanishes both for chronic asthma, and Rebecca.  Donat turned down Rebecca?  Yes, he did go on to win the Oscar for playing Mr. Chips in Goodbye Mr. Chips, but he worked in only ten more movies over the next eighteen years.

Iris bribes Boris to work on Gilbert again, and this gives Boris the courage to return and kick Gilbert out of his room.

So Gilbert moves into Iris' room.  She protests.  He insists.  He replaces her clothing with his.  He climbs over her in the bed.  He enters the bathroom to brush his teeth.  The scene is playfully mischievous without being dangerous.  It fits the quick-witted and physical banter of screwball comedy, which was currently in its heyday.

An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a toothbrush, as Gilbert says.

With the silencing of the noisemakers, Miss Froy is able to stand at her balcony and listen to the troubadour again.  She listens closely.  She hums along.

She does not see the two hands that reach in, with shadows against the back wall, choking the singer to his death.  Miss Froy appreciatively tosses a coin tip down to the pavement below.

The next morning the players board the train.

Miss Froy leans over to pick up her luggage.  A hand pushes on a flower pot in the windowsill above.  Iris runs over to return Miss Froy's dropped glasses.  The flower pot lands on Iris' head.  As she boards the train, she grows woozy.  She passes out.

Miss Froy takes care of Iris.  Takes her to lunch in the dining car.  Writes her name with her finger in the mist on the window.

Sits with her.

And disappears.

The Lady vanishes.

And no one remembers having seen her on the train.

Perhaps Iris dreamed about her.

Perhaps Iris had a hallucination.

Perhaps Iris saw another passenger and mistook her for Miss Froy.

Iris insists Miss Froy was on the train with her.

No one believes Iris.

Until she runs into Gilbert again.

And they spend the rest of the film trying to uncover this perplexing mystery.

The Lady Vanishes is as suspenseful and thrilling as the best of Hitchcock's American films made one and two decades later.  And it is funny.

Everyone has a motive.  Some of them are noble.  Some of them are sinister.  Some of them are innocent.

Watch for the various nationalities.

Including the English.

Including the made-up one.

And see if you can hum along.