The Lady Vanishes is a 1938 British thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The film stars Margaret Lockwood, Michael Redgrave, and May Whitty. It is based on Ethel Lina White’s novel The Wheel Spins (1936).
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Production Company: Gainsborough Pictures
Distributor: Twentieth Century Fox (US), Gaumont-British Picture Corporation and Metro Goldwyn Mayer (UK)
Cast: Margaret Lockwood, Michael Redgrave, Paul Lukas, May Whitty
US Box Office: Unknown
Film Format: Black & White
Genre: Thriller, Mystery
Release Date: October 7, 1938 (London premiere); November 1, 1938 (US)
Plot Summary: While on a train in Europe, English tourist Iris Henderson faints (Margaret Lockwood) and her friend Miss Froy (May Whitty) mysteriously disappears. All of the other passengers on the train deny having ever seen Froy, and the only person who believes Iris is Gilbert (Michael Redgrave), a musicologist who was previously rude to her. As Iris and Gilbert search for Miss Froy, they get drawn into a sinister international conspiracy led by the mysterious Dr. Hartz (Paul Lukas).
Production: In the late 1936, British producer Edward Black of Gainsborough Pictures began work on an adaptation of Ethel Lina White’s 1936 novel The Wheel Spins. Black originally titled his planned film The Lost Lady and he assigned Irish director Roy William Neil to work on the project. A film crew was sent to Yugoslavia to do early background shooting for the film, but when the Yugoslav police discovered that their country was not portrayed positively in the script, they kicked the crew out of the country, so Black decided to scrap the project. In late 1937, Black decided to re-start the project. Alfred Hitchcock, who was under contract with Black at the time, accepted the role of director when Black offered it to him. Hitchcock worked with writers Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder to tighten the pace of the script and to make the opening and ending of the film more exciting. The film was retitled The Lady Vanishes.
Nova Pilbeam, who had previously starred in Hitchcock’s Young and Innocent (1937), and Lili Palmer were both considered for the lead role of Iris Henderson. Instead, Hitchcock decided to go with Margaret Lockwood, who was largely unknown at the time. Lockwood was a fan of Ethel Lina White’s novels so she accepted the part. For the role of Gilbert, Hitchcock went with Michael Redgrave. Redgrave was a stage actor, and was reluctant to leave the stage to take part in the film, until John Gielgud, another stage actor turned film actor, convinced him to do so. The Lady Vanishes was Redgrave’s first film role.
The Lady Vanishes was primarily shot at Islington Studios in London with some additional studio shooting taking place at Lime Grove Studios in Shepard’s Bush, London. Several of the scenes where the train is stopped, including the gun-fight in the forest near the end of the film, were shot on location at the Longmoor Military Camp (specifically along the Longmoor Military Railroad) in Hampshire, England. Filming started in March of 1938 and took less than two months. Redgrave and Hitchcock did not get along well during filming. Redgrave wanted to do more rehearsals with the cast, while Hitchcock wanted the film to be shot more spontaneously. The two never made another film together again. The film production was briefly interrupted by an electrician’s strike, but otherwise shooting went well.
Fun Facts and Trivia: As in many of his other films, Alfred Hitchcock makes a cameo appearance in The Lady Vanishes. Near the end of the film, Hitchcock makes a brief appearance as a traveler at the train station smoking a cigarette and wearing a black coat. Like his character Gilbert, Michael Redgrave attended Cambridge University. Both also have a musical background: Gilbert is a musicologist (someone who scientifically studies music), and Redgrave had been a member of a chorus earlier in his career. The fictional country that most of The Lady Vanishes is set in is called Bandrika (serving as a stand in for Germany). Hitchcock and writers Sydney Gilliat and Frank Launder even created a fictional language for Bandrika (or at least a few phrases of it). The language is most prominently on display in the scenes where the hotel manager (Emile Boreo) is talking to his staff.
The supporting characters Charters (Basil Radford) and Caldicott (Naunton Wayne), the two English passengers obsessed with cricket, were created specifically for the film and do not appear in the original book. The characters were very popular with British audiences so they appeared in several otherwise unrelated films with Radford and Wayne reprising the roles. The two characters specifically reappear in Night Train to Munich (1940), Crook’s Tour (1941), and Millions Like Us (1943); additionally Radford and Wayne played similar characters with different names together in eight other 1940s films.
Reception: The Lady Vanishes was a success at the British box office when it released. While Hitchcock’s three previous films: Secret Agent (1936), Sabotage (1936), and Young and Innocent (1937) all performed poorly, The Lady Vanishes broke that trend. The success of The Lady Vanishes convinced American producer David O. Selznick that Hitchcock had a future in Hollywood, and Selznick would later work with Hitchcock on several films in the United States.
At the time of its release, The Lady Vanishes received mostly positive reviews from critics. The critics of the Monthly Film Bulletin praised Hitchcock’s direction and that the the film was an exceptionally good thriller. Archer Winsten of the New York Post also praised Hitchcock and thought that he did a good job combining thrills and action with humor. John C Mosher of the New Yorker similarly praised Hitchcock’s direction in a positive review. The New York Times named The Lady Vanishes as the best picture of 1938, and in 1939 the New York Film Critics Circle gave Hitchcock their Best Director award.
In retrospect, The Lady Vanishes has continued to receive strong reviews from film critics and is frequently regarded as one of Hitchcock’s best British films. Leonard Maltin gave the film a perfect score in his Movie Guide book and included it on his list of the 100 must see film of the 20th Century. In 1999, the British Film Institute ranked The Lady Vanishes as the 35th best British film of the 20th Century. In the BFI’s publication BFI Screenonline, Mark Duguid wrote that the film was, “arguably the most accomplished, and certainly the wittiest of Hitchcock’s British films, and is up there with the best of his American work.” In 2016, Empire magazine ranked the film as the 82nd best British film of all time.
Why You Should See It: The Lady Vanishes is a really good thriller, and its one of Hitchcock’s best British films. All of the actors give good performances. Mae Whitty is very memorable in her supporting role as Miss Froy. Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne are very funny in the film. As to be expected, Hitchcock makes the film suspenseful. He also does a good job of adding humor to the film without diluting the thrills and lowering the stakes for the protagonists. Hitchcock’s deliberate decision to only use non-diegetic background music at the beginning and ending of the film, also makes The Lady Vanishes stand out.