directed by Alfred Hitchcock
screenplay by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder
after the novel The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White (1936)

This was Criterion #3. Again, this is only a series if it wants to be.

This was perfectly enjoyable. I don’t think there’s much more here than meets the eye. The Criterion Collection is always sort of implying that there’s more to their movies than meets the eye, but it’s a hard case to make with this particular piece. The commentary here bears that out: the guy (Bruce Eder) fills the time by telling us about the history of trains, the prior and subsequent careers of every member of the cast, etc. etc. And for all that, his few real points – about the brilliance of Hitchcock’s work, naturally – seem merely like clumsy overstatements of the obvious. The commentary plays like a grudging, insincere essay assignment about Johnny Tremain.

That’s insulting, so I feel compelled to say: doing commentary for a film that you are not actually associated with is a losing proposition. Always. You may be a professional film writer or scholar or whatever, but in my living room – or on my iPod as the case may be – you’re just another voice, so you’d better be saying something genuinely interesting, and that’s setting the bar much higher than in most magazines or lecture halls. Without the power to grade or quiz us, and without the dignity and mystery of being laid out on a page of print, standard-issue arts commentary reveals itself as pretty thin stuff. Hitchcock handles the clues like a magician handles cards? Buddy, when I talk about movies with my friends, we say more interesting stuff than that.

Readers of the “Disney canon” entries on this site may disagree.

Anyway, my point is that it’s really no reflection on Bruce Eder that his commentary wasn’t worth my time.

More about commentary tracks: watching a movie while you hear someone talk only makes sense if the person is truly talking about what’s on screen. Otherwise the movie is just a distraction from the lecture, or worse, an arbitrary predetermined length for the lecture, almost always too long for anyone’s good. If you are talking about what’s on screen, you need to be truly adding to it rather than just riding along with it, and to do that, you have to have access to external information corresponding to every moment in the film. The only people who have such information are people involved with the making of the film. Exceptionally well-prepared researchers might be able to pull it off if they have volumes and volumes of material. But even directors usually can’t stay interesting through the entire duration of a movie. So beware.

Criterion’s got it tough since they’re committed to bringing out important films from decades ago and also to having commentary. So far we’ve had three movies by “classic” dead directors. I imagine that Criterion manages to wrangle higher-quality commentary when the creative team is still alive. We’ll see. OR WILL WE?

Do I really have to talk about the movie? In this movie a Lady Vanishes and then eventually [spoiler warning] she Reappears. I’m not telling where she is. You’ll know right away. It takes a remarkably long time to get going – the commentary informs me that this is, in fact, a brilliant stroke – and Hitchcock still doesn’t totally have his comedy and thriller pockets sorted out yet – as in, “now where did I put that next sequence?” [pat pat] – but it’s all good-natured and lively and cozy, and I have no real complaints. Whatever power it may once have had to grab you by the collar or make you laugh out loud has faded or been superceded, but I don’t think a movie like this will ever stop being pleasant company. I’m not sure that can be said of Flightplan, the trailer for which gave away the best detail in The Lady Vanishes. Thanks a lot, Flightplan.

I recognize now that The Last Express – it’s a computer game, okay? – was quite directly inspired by this movie. I guess so too was Madame Tutli-Putli, which I saw earlier this year but didn’t write about. I’m just letting things leap to mind – obviously, there are hundreds of “intrigue on a train” pieces that could all be tied in just as easily. Though, hm, I just checked and Murder on the Orient Express was written four years before this came out, so it’s not fair to say that every train mystery necessarily stems from here. I guess I’d have to read Orient Express to see whether the “feel” of this movie has influenced every other such movie, or whether that “feel” just goes with the territory. Or both?

This time, soundtrack club, I’m giving you the complete score – well, all the non-diegetic music anyway. The credits imply that the music is by Louis Levy (1894-1957), but don’t be fooled! It’s really by Charles Williams (1893-1978).

It’s your classic bookend score: Brief main title in the requisite pompous style, immediately followed by a curtain-raiser cue that sets the scene. Then, at the end of the movie, a “finale” flourish, immediately followed by a variant on the opening for the end credits. The whole movie in 3 minutes!

Not to give it away… but in this movie, the main title music is the MacGuffin. I think this may be the only movie ever made where that’s the case. Yes?

Enough already – here’s the track.

As you can see above, I am once again watching the old Criterion version from the library, despite the existence of a newer, snazzier reissue. Better picture and sound would have been appreciated, honestly. Glad to know they’re out there now.

I didn’t talk about the actors or the script or anything. Oh well.