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So as you know, I stopped writing lengthy reviews on this site this year, keeping the blog as more of a film diary of sorts.  Lo and behold,...

Wednesday, October 06, 2010

Hitchcock Month - The Lady Vanishes

The Lady Vanishes (1938)
Starring Margaret Lockwood, Michael Redgrave, and Dame May Whitty
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
**Currently streaming on Netflix** 

Going back to the old school Hitchcock again (the "before Hitchcock was Hitchcock" era), The Lady Vanishes is an acceptable film, but one that really doesn't get a reaction from me one way or another.  It's there...it's fine...but there's really no other descriptor better suited to it.  It's just "fine."

A young American woman boards a train in Central Europe.  While there, she befriends an elderly English woman traveling in the same car as her.  The American drifts off to sleep and when she awakens she discovers the old lady as vanished.  No one on the train seems to remember her in the slightest.  Is the American going crazy or is there some conspiracy at work here?

The biggest problem with The Lady Vanishes is that it takes much too long to get started.  We don't even reach the train station until about 25 minutes in.  Prior to that, we're forced to sit through some apparent "comedy" taking place at a rather run-down hotel.  We meet the central characters here, but we just as easily could have met these characters on the train.  Whittling down this initial act would have allowed us to get into the action much sooner and would have led to a much more taut film.  That being said, the film is certainly more in the "comedic mystery" realm rather than full-on thriller, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.  However, trimming of this comedy in the first act would have led to a much better film.

The acting is quite good.  Some early cinema can be filled with overacting, but the key players here are fine.

See, there's that word "fine" again. Which is all this movie is.

The RyMickey Rating:  C

2 comments:

  1. This blog doesn't like me commenting.
    Got errors the last two times I tried. D-:

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  2. It's been acting funky with me when I've been posting stuff lately, too...it's not just you...

    ReplyDelete