Rafe Meager writes the “Rotten and Good” newsletter and very graciously agreed to chat with me about Alfred Hitchcock’s 1938 thriller The Lady Vanishes. Their “You’re not getting Boy with Apple you goddamn little fruit!” essay is terrific.
You can watch the whole movie on Youtube here, if you like, or just the trailer below:
RAFE:
The summary of this movie on SBS (our beloved Aussie community channel) is "While on her way to continental Europe, a rich young Englishwoman attempts to prove that an elderly governess was actually present on a train." Why does this slap so hard?
I think it's because it gives us absolutely no reason why she's trying to do this, and presumably if this is meant to be a thriller the reason that she would need to do this should be salacious or violent or something intriguing, but instead of telling us about that the film summary is like "the important thing is just to determine if an elderly woman was on a train". And you know what, hell yes.
DANNY:
It’s a fantastic set of stakes to give a thriller. She doesn’t have to save her own life or prove her own innocence to the federal government. It’s like the dramatic equivalent of Kidney Now! Prove that one governess was on the train. No more, no less.
RAFE:
I guess the first thing to say is that it’s a mystery to me why the gaslighting revival has skipped over this film. It would seem to be a pretty classic entry into the genre, but I never hear people talk about it. Maybe it’s eclipsed by his other films, and I just have the benefit of not having seen them. This is only the second Hitchcock I’ve ever seen, and the first was Rope. They’re at pretty opposite ends of the spectrum. I prefer this one, it’s got so much raw emotion in it. It’s also a much warmer film than Rope and than Hitchcock seems to be known for. Was that your experience with it?
Something has to have happened to Alfred Hitchcock to make a film about being gaslit by a bunch of people who actually know they’re doing the wrong thing but are too selfish and venal to behave properly, so I went to look at Hitchcock/Truffaut:
FRANCOIS TRUFFAUT. Mr. Hitchcock, you were born in London on August 13, 1899. The only thing I know about your childhood is the incident at the police station. Is that a true story?
ALFRED HITCHCOCK. Yes, it is. I must have been about four or five years old. My father sent me to the police station with a note. The chief of police read it and locked me in a cell for five or ten minutes, saying, “This is what we do to naughty boys.”
F.T. Why were you being punished?
A.H. I haven’t the faintest idea. As a matter of fact, my father used to call me his “little lamb without a spot.” I truly cannot imagine what it was I did.
F.T. I’ve heard that your father was very strict.
A.H. Let’s just say he was a rather nervous man.
DANNY:
The Lady Vanishes is in a strange sort of position, I think. Just like how everyone remembers Rebecca and no one really talks about his other early Du Maurier adaptation the year before (Jamaica Inn, not a great book, not a great movie and quite rightfully overlooked), I think The Lady Vanishes tends to get a little eclipsed by Sabotage and The 39 Steps, both of which came out a year or two before it.
Since it’s such an explicitly political film, too, it’s also a victim of its own time. People nowadays remember World War II much more strongly than they remember the appeasement era or the Phoney War, so it’s easier to overlook. Lifeboat and Suspicion and Notorious and Saboteur all have much longer afterlives than The Lady Vanishes for that reason, I think.
Are you familiar with the old Vanishing Hotel Room urban legend? It’s the basic source material for the book The Lady Vanishes was based on (ditto Flightplan!) and somehow I’d been familiar with the former without ever having seen the latter. I often have a really difficult time watching movies where a big part of the plot involves following a protagonist who no one else believes – I remember being physically agonized as a kid when The Fugitive movie came out.
