The Lady Vanishes

Bon film !

source: The Lady Vanishes

Iris Carr is a rich and beautiful Socialite holidaying in The Mediterranean, bored with her friends and the lifestyle, she decides to stay on as they set for home. She realises she's bored without her friends and decides to head home to London, by train. She pays over the odds for her seat, then suffers an accident, almost missing her train. Concussed, she befriends the prim English lady Miss Froy, who tells Iris her life story, and reasons for leaving her powerful employer, after falling into a deep sleep Miss Froy disappears, but nobody can remember who Miss Froy was, was she dreaming? Only fellow traveller Max Hare offers a helping hand. I'm surprised there are so many less then favourable reviews for this production. It is immaculately produced, it looks utterly marvellous, with flawless camera work, it's so bright and vivid. I'd say it's tremendously well acted too, Tuppence Middleton is fantastic as Iris Carr, she does a great job playing the spoilt brat turned nice girl. Stephanie Cole and Gemma Jones make a wonderful dry and judgmental pair. Possibly Selina Cadell steals the show as Miss Froy, what a cracking actress she is. So they made a few tweaks to the script, in order to jazz it up and bring it up to date, it's been produced several times, and I was glad they did something a little different. The ending is really brilliantly crafted. A cracking drama, 9/10

(Contains a couple character development spoilers) I'm perplexed by all the negative reviews here. I liked this very much. It's very good film, beautifully written, filmed and acted in gorgeous locations and on realistic sets. And Tuppence Middleton is excellent and believable in the leading role. In fact I liked her character from the start. Iris is a complex character whose story is revealed slowly - she has no family, she knows she is usually selfish (because that's the nature of the company she usually keeps), but she can empathise with Mrs Froy, and this is because she lost her own family when she was very young in the 1918 flu epidemic. I'd say the dialogue and plot development were very well done. And it's a great cast. It kept my interest throughout, and I'd happily watch it again. Maybe part of the problem some people are having is in the title, leading viewers to expect something akin to the Hitchcock movie (which my wife tells me is a parody rather than an adaptation of the original story). I haven't seen the Hitchcock movie anyway so I had no such expectations. I've seen some criticism of the audibility of the dialogue, and I just don't think it's valid. I could hear it all just fine and without the benefit of subtitles. This is a fine movie and an excellent adaptation of the original story, and I would wholeheartedly recommend it to any one anyone who likes period drama thrillers.

The title character is a brat and most unsympathetic. So when "stuff" starts happening to her you wondering if it her personality, her drinking to excess, a possible concussion from and earlier fall, potential insanity, whatever. You simply don't know. Production values are very high. They went to a lot of trouble to produce a "Poirot-like" world for this very independent strong minded woman. Tuppence Middleton does "yeoman's work" in developing the central character. The plot device reminds me very much of the recent film "Flightplan" with Jodie Foster who loses track of her daughter on a overseas flight and NO ONE believes her when she tells the truth. It, of course, is maddening because we are put into the position of the title character and her traveling companions. The British are number one at mysteries, and this is well worth the time to watch a guess about what is going on. Enjoy (on the edge of your seat).

I think I may have seen the Hitchcock original, in the dim and distant past, round my grandparents house while playing Kerplunk. Needless to say, my memories of it are hazy at best, so I can hardly compare it to this made for TV modern version. Keeley Hawes plays the heroine who eventually feels the whole world is conspiring against her, and although I think there may be a few more clues to the solution compared to the 1938 classic, this doesn't make the frustration we feel for her predicament or the confusion as to what the hell's going on any less palpable. Online talk has dismissed this remake as a cheap copy, but you know what? Judged on it's own merits, it's a super piece of entertainment, and all the moaners can get a life. NOTHING these days is unique, everything has been ripped off and imitated to the ninth degree, so why waste time worrying? ENJOY YOURSELF!! 7/10

Hitchcock's movie is wildly over-rated and people are far too snowed by the mumbling, bumbling cricket fans, Michael Redgrave's charm and Lockwood's beauty-in-distress. The new version may not be perfect but it is most definitely not a remake of the 1938 movies, it's an adaptation of the book and far closer to the novel The Wheel Spins. Does it wrap up too quickly? Well, so does the book, unfortunately. Hitchcock added way too much farce and a silly gun battle that veer so far from the nature of the novel as to be almost unbelievable. Despite the ending, I recommend The Wheel Spins unreservedly. Its a dark psychological study of a mind almost sinking into madness. The author does a wonderful job of writing about a socialite who is drawn into a mystery way beyond any trouble she's ever had to deal with, one that makes her for the first time in her life feel alone and helpless.

The only reason I sat through this dreadful remake was because I am suffering from a persistent chest cold which prevents me from going out on Saturday night which is when I saw this televised version of the famous Hitchcock 1939 definitive film.I constantly was making mental comparisons with the latter.Oh how I missed the carefully crafted characters and humour that Hitchcock directed especially Charters & Caldicott.Instead we had two very boring women with whom I didn't care a fig.Even Hitchcock's Mr & Mrs "Todhunter" were 10 times more interesting than the characters in this 2013 telefilm. I agree with all the negative comments said above by other IMDb.com users.I suppose the actors felt lucky just being in this travesty considering most are out of work at any one time.This version was slow, tedious and lacked suspense & I don't care if the plot followed nearer the original author's novel.I didn't recognise most of the actors in the leading roles.

Based on the 1938 Hitchcock thriller of the same name (which I haven't seen), this looked like rather a good whodunnit. The cast if full of young up-comers and old stalwarts, many of whom seem to be doing the rounds in British TV at the moment. The premise: a beautiful young socialite, Iris Carr, is making her way back to England by train after a Balkans holiday and finds herself befriended by a kind older lady who calls herself Mrs Froy. Disorientated by a fall at the station earlier, Iris drifts off to sleep, only to find on awakening that Mrs Froy has disappeared and nobody else seems to have seen her - in fact they don't believe she existed in the first place. Of course there are only two possible outcomes: the woman isn't real and Iris is barking mad, or she has genuinely disappeared and there's some sort of conspiracy going on. Unfortunately the final hour dedicated to resolving the mystery is slow-paced, boring and ultimately all a bit predictable. Apart from Sandy McDade and Tuppence Middleton, all the other characters are stereotypes who get to do very little with their screen time. Middleton is superb, tackling Iris's transition from petulant snobbery to concern and brave determination with aplomb, but the plodding script can't keep up with her enthusiasm. It's definitely a Sunday afternoon movie, and one you can watch with Grandma - just don't expect edge-of-your-seat thrills.

THE LADY VANISHES is the third adaptation of an old-time mystery novel. It was first made - to great success - by Hitchcock in the 1930s, and then a remake with Cybil Shepherd and Elliott Gould followed in the 1970s. This new version is a TV movie made by the BBC, and - somewhat inevitably - it's the weakest version yet. The problem with this adaptation is a mixture of both the script and the budget. It's obviously made to cash in on the success of DOWNTON ABBEY, but there's far too much of the socialising and not enough of the thriller. The first half hour is excruciatingly slow and even once the action shifts to the train it doesn't get much better. The scenes on the train feel claustrophobic and not in a good way; Hitch's version ended with a rousing action scene, but the drawn-out mystery here just fizzles out with a lack of inspiration and budget constraints. The cast is no better. Tuppence Middleton (TORMENTED) is the detestable heroine, and required to undergo a character arc from snobby and rude to warm and caring, but Middleton is too inexperienced to convince in the part. The likes of Keeley Hawes and Julian Rhind-Tutt are merely window dressing, their performances weak imitations of their roles in UPSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS and THE HOUR respectively. As for Gemma Jones and Stephanie Cole, the actresses are game but their comedy value is virtually nil. Jesper Christensen must be thinking that his days of starring in James Bond movies are long in the past with this pitiful, by-the-numbers TV drama.