Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on rockin’ flatscreen.
Everything about pursuing this list of films is conditional. I thought I had been done with silent films for some time, but the number of silent film reviews I’ve posted in the last couple of weeks belies that. Additionally, I had been done with the work of Alfred Hitchcock, and yet here we are again with another Hitchcock film. This time it’s The Lady Vanishes, a film from the late 1930s, and one that sees Hitch starting to include the sort of complexity that he eventually became known for. There’s a straight through-line in this film; there’s just a lot of stuff going on on the side and on the fringes of the plot this time.
An avalanche has closed of traffic in a small, fictional European country that is vaguely Switzerlandish, at least based on the languages spoken by the various people who crowd into a guesthouse. Included in this motley collection is Iris Henderson (Margaret Lockwood), a British girl looking to get back home in time for her impending marriage to a man she doesn’t really love or even care for very much. We meet a few more people here, too. The most important of these are Gilbert (Michael Redgrave), who is researching the folk songs and dances of the native population; and Miss Froy (Dame May Whitty), an ex-governess travelling back to England.
