The Lady Vanishes (1938) is Alfred Hitchcock’s most quick-witted and devilish comic thriller. The beautiful Margaret Lockwood (Night Train to Munich) is traveling across Europe by train, meets a charming spinster (Dame May Whitty, Suspicion),
who then seems to disappear into thin air. The younger woman turns
investigator and finds herself drawn into a complex web of mystery and
high adventure. Also starring Michael Redgrave (The Browning Version), The Lady Vanishes remains one of the great filmmaker’s purest delights. Alfred Hitchcock had hit his early, near-flawless stride by the time of The Lady Vanishes,
the 1938 classic that seems as bright and funny now as the day it was
released. After the deliciously comic opening reels at a European
hotel where a train has been snowed in, the plot kicks into gear: a
very nice old lady (Dame May Whitty) suddenly disappears in mid-train
ride. Worse, the young woman (Margaret Lockwood) who'd befriended her
can't find anybody to confirm that the lady ever actually existed.
Luckily, suave gadabout Michael Redgrave is at the ready--to say nothing
of two English cricket fans, brought to memorable life by Basil Radford
and Naunton Wayne. The film bops along briskly, borne along on the
charm of the players and the witty script by expert craftsman Frank
Launder and Sidney Gilliat (who also did the delightful Green for Danger and the St. Trinian's
films), to say nothing of Hitchcock's healthy sense of humor about the
whole thing--it may be the most "British" of his films.
Sabotage (1936) is based on Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent and starring Oscar Homolka and Sylvia Sidney. Sabotage is one of Hitchcock's most significant pre-war British films. Karl Verloc, manager of a London cinema, is secretly involved with a gang of European saboteurs who are plotting a massive bomb attack in Piccadilly Circus. With the police already suspicious of Verloc, they place an undercover detective on his trail can he bring the saboteurs to justice before they perpetrate their outrage on London?