The Lady Vanishes - Criterion Collection

Rating:
Summary: A Truly Brilliant Mystery Movie
Review: This is perhaps the most comprehensively delightful of Hitchcock's early movies. Or at least what we tend to think of as his early movies although this is in fact something like his 27th film! It's the tale of Iris Henderson (Margaret Lockwood) who is travelling by train from central Europe back to England to marry some man she doesn't love for his money. She befriends a sweet old lady by the name of Miss Froy (May Whitty) who suddenly and unaccountably vanishes. The other passengers unanimously deny that any such person ever existed. Everyone thinks she has been seeing things and she is almost brought to the point of believing it herself. But of course she hasn't and it's all an evil and nefarious plot involving dastardly foreigners and stuff.

It is a train rich in character. Paul Lukas, Mary Clare and Philip Leaver are the main dastardly foreigners; Cecil Parker and Linden Travers are an adulterous couple whose relationship is visibly falling apart. Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne, are the cricket-obsessed Charters and Caldicott, of all the comic touches in Hitchcok's films perhaps the most successful. And Michael Redgrave is Gilbert Redman, the hero who comes to Iris' aid. He is an intriguing hero, dashing, courageous and charming in the final scenes and yet, in the scenes at the hotel where we first meet him, a complete tosser, with the arrogant and obnoxious Englishman abroad's sense of complete entitlement to do whatever he pleases with no consideration for others at all. So that we are decidedly resistant later when we are expected to start liking the man.

In any case, this is one of the great high points in Hitchcock's career and one of the best mystery movies ever made. Worth watching again and again.

Rating:
Summary: Great Hitchcock! Great disc!
Review: This movie is a lot of fun, and has a couple good twists (some of which are actually easy to see). This Criterion disc looks great. I especially appreciated the restoration demonstration. Just makes you appreciate what they went through restoring it. And the commentary is fun. I love it when someone just gets so deep into their work.

Rating:
Summary: The Best of Hitchcock- on a moving train
Review: This no-budget Hitchcock is one of my all-time favorites. A must for all Hitchcock fans and train-movie fans. In classic Hitchcock-style, you are constantly wondering who everyone is. It's great fun, and the British humor is hilarious. Hey, they're all just trying to get somewhere on this train, but someone has an eye to murder. One of the best scenes in cinema is here, after Miss Froy's name appears in a smoke-filled tunnel. It's an eerie, puzzling A.H. mystery. Enjoy it over and over!!!

Rating:
Summary: THE WHEEL SPINS
Review: When a kindly old lady disappears from a swift moving train, her young acquaintance finds an imposter in her place and a spiraling mystery to solve. Hitchcock's first real winner, a smarmy, wit-drenched mystery which precipitated his Hollywood welcome. For a movie that is regarded throughout the world as one of Hitchcock's lighter masterpieces, the oddest thing about it is that it was conceived for another director altogether: Roy William Neill, who later made most of the Basil Rathbone/Sherlock Holmes thillers. The first half of the adventure is not an adventure at all, but a rather jolly comedy about perennial Britishers abroad, being forced to share the maid's room in a mittle-European railway hotel and finding, when they have dressed for dinner, that there is nothing left to eat. Margaret Lockwood plays a spoiled heiress who's forced to share her room with Michael Redgrave after she has him ejected for making too much noise with his peasant clog-dancing..........THE LADY VANISHES is pure, harmless entertainment of a kind which is no longer considered commercial. With superb control, it pleases and it satisfies, and years after seeing it, one remembers its characters with the affection usually reserved for the oldest and dearest of friends. This, along with "39 Steps" is considered early classic Hitchcock; from the novel THE WHEEL SPINS by Ethel Lina White.

Rating:
Summary: Nice package from Laserlight
Review: While I have no doubt that the Criterion edition of this early Hitchcock classic is probably the one to own if cost isn't a factor, I have to say that the Laserlight DVD of "The Lady Vanishes" is no slouch, either. You get a solid print of the film; the full trailer from the "Shadow of a Doubt" re-release; and a Tony Curtis introduction that, while not very illuminating, at least does a good job in whetting the appetite for the film. I had my fingers crossed when I purchased a few of these Laserlight DVDs, as an apparent bargain isn't always so, but it turned out that I needn't have worried. SOMEBODY at Laserlight is assuring that good product is being turned out.

Rating:
Summary: Superb
Review: Wonderful movie, but I think you have the quote wrong. It should be "I've eaten sausage rolls at the docks." (docks, not dogs -- I think)