Alfred Hitchcock’s TheLady Vanishes (1938) is a essay in foreign affairs, whose lessons are as
applicable today as they were at the time of the film’s creation. Released in
the aftermath of the Anchluss, Hitler’s invasion of Austria, it’s Ship of Fools on a train, where the
spectrum of English class and politics is deliciously rendered with Hitchcock’s
consummate humor and perspicacity. Charters (Basil Radford) and Caldicott
(Naunton Wayne) are two cricket enthusiasts whose sole interest is to get home
to find out the results of a match. Mr. Todhunter (Cecil Parker) is a
pragmatist lawyer, Iris Henderson (Margaret Lockwood), an idealist aristocrat
and her romantic interest Gilbert (Michael Redgrave) embody the best of British
moral values and, of course, there’s the secret agent, the representative of
British cunning who naturally turns out to be an unprepossesing little old lady named Miss
Froy (Dame May Whitty). “Don’t jump over
a fence if you can sit on it,” is a line from the film that epitomizes Neville Chamberlain’s idea of appeasement and isolation and here is his famous speech
of November 30, 1938: “The settlement of the Czechoslovakian problem, which has now
been achieved is, in my view, only the prelude to a larger settlement in which
all Europe may find peace. This morning I had another talk with the German
Chancellor, Herr Hitler, and here is the paper which bears his name
upon it as well as mine. Some of you, perhaps, have already heard what it
contains but I would just like to read it to you: ' ... We regard the
agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement as symbolic of
the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again.'” The most
interesting character is actually Mr. Todhunter, literally “death seeker” who
waves a while flag at the enemy even after he’s been mortally wounded. Sound
familiar?
