Far from being gothic though, The Lady Vanishes is an amusing and light comedy/thriller. The story starts out in a cabin hotel of a fictional country resembling some place in middle eastern Europe. We're introduced where a rich young woman named Iris, tells her girlfriends that "I've been everywhere and done everything.... What is there left for me but marriage?", Iris Henderson (played by Margaret Lockwood), still gets a refreshing adventure as she gets mixed up in the mysterious disappearance of an older, kind lady, while on a train heading through Europe. Iris meets her before the incident, and they share dinner and conversation, so her sudden disappearance bewilders her. She insists on solving this mystery, which ends up being relevant to all the train passengers from the hotel, among others two, dry british archetypes, Charters and Caldicott, who became so popular that they spawned a spinoff movie with themselves as leads.

Hitchcock made this classic as his final call in Britain, giving him succes enough to go to USA and continue his work there. Hitchcock shows his skills here as a master of eerie humor and suspense, as we through Iris encounter more or less strange characters on her search for the truth. Some of the characters have a mysterious and almost unpleasant and paranoid-inducing strangeness to them, that brings the much later work of Roman Polanski to mind, while others are more traditionally comedic, and the male lead the typical cocky charmeur. The mystery remains so throughout the film, as the viewer keeps on guessing and being surprised, which is examplatory Hitchcock territory, and the mastering of pace and storytelling shows promise of a calculating and experienced director who luckily hadn't peaked yet, but took everything to the fullest after moving to the US to work.

The Lady Vanishes is solid, lighthearted entertainment that is extremely rewatchable.

5 out of 6

- Reviewed by Lars S. B. Andersen