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: Criterion is Cool
Review: I don't have the other DVD version to compare this with, but this Criterion edition of THE LADY VANISHES is very good. There is an animated index page with the sound of a train. The print of this film looks very good -- of special interest is the "restoration" section of the index. Through the use of "wipes" the Criterion people show you a before and after version of the cleaned-up print. Very neat.There is also a commentary from a film historian which is interesting, if a bit dry. I didn't get a chance to listen to the whole thing yet. This is a good Hitchcock movie. It's a lot of fun -- as innocent as a Nancy Drew mystery at times, but with interesting strokes from the master! I had a good time.
Rating:
Summary: CRITERION EDITION FAR SUPERIOR!!
Review: A great movie deserves a great viewing. Do yourself a favor and rent or by the criterion version of Lady Vanishes. This version is inexpensive for a reason. It has not been restored or printed from an original print as the criterion has.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful!
Review: hitchcock i must say started his REAL directing when he made this film! very good and cleaver...also very funny with the British humor!
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)
Rating: 
Summary: Great film - poor transfer.
Review: This is *not* the Criterion Collection eition. THE LADY VANISHES is truly the greatest film of Hitchcock's British period, and one of his best films overall. While the source materials are of fine quality (good clean print of the film with nice contrasts and good sound), the transfer leaves much to be desired. I have seen VHS versions which were more pleasing to the eye and this DVD looks as though it was mastered from an old video tape. The introduction by Tony Curtis (!?) is a waste of time. Stick to the more expensive (but worth it) Criterion Collection edition.
Rating:
Summary: A WONDERFUL ENTERTAINMENT
Review: This is one of the Master's first great masterpieces. It has all of the elements that would later make him the greatest of suspense moviemakers and of moviemaking in general. It begins very humourously, and at first seems to be just that, a comedy, and a great one at that. The characters are lively and the situations halarious. Then as the movie goes on, the suspense mounts to a fantastic climax while still retaining that wonderful sense of humour. A MUST SEE for anyone who wants to become a student of the MASTER!!
Rating:
Summary: Hitchcock's entertaining comedy thriller - one of his best!
Review: "The Lady Vanishes" is one of Hitchcock's early black and white British films (1938) and the success of this film helped Hitchcock to be recognised in America as a talented director. He made one more film in England after "The Lady Vanishes" then left for Hollywood where he became famous as the top director of suspense movies. "The Lady Vanishes" is a cracking comedy thriller with a notable script by Sidney Gilliatt, Frank Launder and Alma Reville (Hitchcock's wife). Mainly set on a train snowbound in the Swiss Alps Margaret Lockwood is Iris Henderson who befriends Miss Froy (Dame May Whitty). Miss Froy then mysteriously vanishes and no one on the train will admit seeing her (although many of them did in fact meet her they each have their own reasons to keep quiet about it). Iris manages to persuade fellow traveller Gilbert Redman (Michael Redgrave in his screen debut) to help her in the search. Cricket fanatics Charters and Caldicott (Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne) have seen Miss Froy on the train but are worried that an investigation into her disappearance might delay them getting to Manchester in time for their beloved Test Match so they decide to stay silent. Dr Hartz (Paul Lukas) tries to convince Iris that she is mistaken and has imagined the entire episode due to a blow on the head she received prior to the train journey. Several other passengers on the train also saw Miss Froy but do not want to be involved which confuses our heroine and places her in great danger as the journey progresses. Some favourite lines from the film: Basil Radford (on the phone to London): "I'm enquiring about the Test Match in Manchester. Cricket, sir, cricket! What! You don't know! You can't be in England and not know the Test score!". Margaret Lockwood (to Michael Redgrave): "I know there's a Miss Froy - she's as real as you are". The film was remade in colour in 1979 with Elliott Gould and Cybill Shepherd but the Hitchcock version is still the best. For anyone interested in spotting Hitchcock's regular cameo appearance this comes right at the end of the film when Lockwood and Redgrave arrive back in London. (Hitchcock can be seen at Victoria Station smoking a cigar). Clive Roberts.
Rating:
Summary: This is the first time I watched this movie and I loved it.
Review: This B & W Hitchcock film is definitely going to be near the top of my list for favorite films -- and what is amazing is that this movie was made almost 70 years ago. It stands up very well. The action never stops, the story is intriguing, and there are some very funny lines in it -- some that are slyly suggestive in a witty way. The European setting (first in a mountain chalet in a fictitious country and then on a train) combine with some pre-World War II political commentary, particularly about pacifism and the brutality of the enemy they are facing. There are jokes about the English (every English person on the train will all be in the dining car having tea at 4, notes one character)
The plot involves a woman who vanishes on a train while her young friend is taking a nap. When she asks where the woman is, everyone denies having seen her with anyone. She is made to feel that she's hallucinating the whole thing, perhaps as a result of a head injury. She's certain enough to not give up trying to find out what happened to the woman, and is joined in her efforts by a rakish young man.
I think this is definitely my favorite Hitchcock. I highly recommend this movie.
Rating:
Summary: It takes a woman to play musical chairs in spying
Review: Just before the war, Hitchcock gives us a lesson about what we are supposed to do. We are supposed to get in touch and keep contact with those in the German block who have things to say about what is happening and how we can face it. Here again it is a woman who is doing the job and doing it well, a simple old lady and yet a spy, even if she does not like the word. Here the medium through which the message can travel is music, an entertainment and yet a message about a coming war. This is intertwined with a love affair and takes place on a train. The film works at a second level too, the level of allusions to other films : Laurel and Hardy and their habit to bang their heads against low beams, Miss Jane Marple and her Agatha Christie both in the old lady spy and in the train Orient-Express-like situation, without Hercule Poirot, but we can't have everything. And many others that you will catch and recognize. This is brilliant cinema. But it is even a little bit more in the acting and the shooting : the camera is used intelligently in a very mobile way and the actors do not overact, they are trying to be natural, but with rhythm. Some of the scenes will be used over and over again in numerous films that will come later, like the diverting of the train onto a side line, like the luggage carriage scene with animals and a fight, etc. Then there is humour in all that, English humour of course. Their love for cricket is nicely laughed at, and ends up with the postponement of the match. Their love for tea is lightly made fun of, but it becomes a clue to the truth. Their unhygienic use of sugar served in an open sugar bowl with no spoon (Use your fingers please !) and transformed into pawns on a table to demonstrate a cricket match, has to bring a smile on our lips. And many other details like these. But the lesson of courage is given by an old governess who is also a music teacher, and that music is definitely the red thread that runs through the film : guitar, clarinet, piano, singing, dancing, etc, right to the end where it provides the last touching stroke of colour in a dark situation and a black and white film : the colour of courage, generally seen as red, is in our eyes, or maybe in our ears. The great master is definitely born. When you cannot show something, just conjure it up with a little bit of imagination.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
| 
