Watch Out For Little Old Ladies- Sir Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

 

The Lady Vanishes, starring Margaret Lockwood, Michael Redgrave, Dame Mae Whitty, directed by Sir Alfred Hitchcock, 1938  

Modern film audiences, you know audiences who came of age in the 1960s and beyond are used to having our spies, our good side spies anyway, somewhere on the order of James Bond, at least. You know guys, cool guys in form-fitting suits, working for the “good guy” alphabet intelligence agencies against the nefarious enemy (the ‘reds,’ if not stated) with plenty of high tech equipment to off the bastards and plenty of time too to bed in the downy billows some comely female, friend or foe. Or if a female spy, a “good guys” spy just as likely to crack-back a guy as “curl his toes.” We are certainly not expecting to see a little old lady in tennis sneakers (okay, okay I’m a little over the top on that description but you get the point, a seemingly harmless woman looking forward to pensions and stuff and not rough and tumble), some sweet old lady governess with no more than a good memory and an ear for music, carry the day against the bad guys of the world political scene, especially in the 1930s when the world really was filled with many bad guys. Yeah, the 1930s when we know who was blocking the world and for what purposes and lots of people, especially in blood-drained Europe, were after the fall of Spain forced to make decisions about fighting the bad guys, or taking a dive when the deal went down. Lots did the latter but this would not be much of film if some did not take up the fight, a fight to the finish. This film under review, Sir Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes, is strictly a homage to those little old ladies and their sneaky ways around the “dark world” of espionage.   

But enough of homages. Here is the skinny on the do’s and don’ts of little old lady espionage. Miss Froy, our little old lady spy, working the old sweet lady governess cover, is stuck in some Middle European location during the 1930s a time when lots of bad things were going on in Middle Europe, things like the disappearance of nations under the jackboot of the Nazis, German or homegrown, and although the locale named was fictitious we can fill in the dots about the world political situation as it got filtered in that spot. She is stuck in a hotel for a night because the train that is carrying her to jolly old England has been sidetracked by an avalanche. Well they get the train going the next day everything points to an uneventful train ride to the nearest port and home to merry old.         

But of course no such thing is in the cards for our Miss Froy. Somehow nefarious parties figured out she was a spy and decided to do something about it, about what she could give to the British Foreign ministry if she made it that far. Here is how it went and as a plan it wasn’t bad even if it did have too many moving parts to success. Miss Froy struck up a hotel friendship with Iris (played by Margaret Lockwood), a young debutante-type going home to marry the next best thing, the next best thing with a serious bankbook, a few days later. On the train they got even friendlier. Then Miss Froy vanished, gone, left no forwarding address, a hard task from a fast-moving train. Iris got worried, worried even more when the passengers on the train played dumb and “saw no evil.” Well everybody but Gilbert, a wild boy clarinet player (that mad monk clarinet thing the every be-bop-less 1930s mother warned their daughters against and which should have made Iris very wary but you know how boy-girl things go in the movies). He finally believed her and they began a search of the train but see here is where the thing got tricky. The bad guys, led by a doctor, did a switch, brought a “sick” person on a stretcher on board at the first stop and made her the Miss Froy and the real one was placed under wraps as “sick” to be disposed of by that evil doctor. But Iris and Gilbert figured out there had to have been a switch and they, not without some rooty-toot-toot rough play, got Miss Froy back and help get her out of the jam she was in order to make a run for it.

Eventually Gilbert and Iris, alone with several upstanding British citizens who were also travelling on the train left the bad guys high and dry. And Miss Froy, well Miss Froy sang, sang like a canary at the Foreign Ministry when the dust settled. And Iris and Gilbert, well you know Iris was made of better stuff than grabbing the best next thing rich guy with that big bankbook, and she ran off against all good advice if you ask me with a damn clarinet player. Ah, boy-girl stuff, go figure.