Reading Film : The Lady Vanishes

The multifaceted genre film, The Lady Vanishes (1938) a combination of a thriller, comedy, romance, and mystery; most predominately embodies the iconic director’s profound understanding and control of the emotional affects developed through the use of humor along with horror and suspense.

A film does not just start, it begins. The opening provides a basis for what is to come and initiates us into the narrative.

The film begins with a panorama of a snow-banked alpine village where the fictional setting, the nation of Bandrika, is introduced. Remarkably, Hitchcock fabricates the set with the use of toy trains, powder snow and frozen figurines on the sidewalk.

The camera moves to expose a fabricated set as it was essential  to develop a playful tone and a sense of quaint, reassuring artifice crucial to his technique. With constant camera movement, the railway station is established.

Finally the inn is established by a frontal long shot of the location as the shot continues without cut but continued camera movement to establish the location as a continued space.

Finally the continuing shot dissolves to the establishing shot of the inn where we find a crowd waiting. This seemingly safe and charming setting is further developed when the passengers of the English train must inhabit a local inn.

The long shot cuts to a midshot of a man in the reception of the inn and a middle aged lady who was just introduced in the former  shot. This shot gives importance to these characters over the other characters present in the inn.

While continuing their action the scene cuts to a long shot of he other characters present in the inn while they were giving an anxious look toward the two establishing the people sitting anxiously in the room.

 The next shot follows the female character from the mid-long shot at the inn to her going out of the inn as the door opens due to a rush of wind and the lady holds her hat while going out suggesting some trouble in the weather.

Just as the door closes and the lady leaves, two other loud noisy man enters through the door in a long shot.

The shot follows the two of them as the walk to the reception and put down the luggage and at this point the chaos in the inn begins to grow

At this point the camera cuts to the close-up of a wall clock where a man is coming out with a siren. This symbolically shows the beginning of chaos in the inn.

Midshot of the man in the reception talking to people on phone frustrated as an effect of the chaos created by so many hyper boarders present in the inn.

Repeatation of the man with the siren in the clock to emphasize on the prevailing chaos but this time the man with the siren goes inside the clock.

This is again a midshot of the reception man who after trying hard to sove an issue fails and hangs up on the phone.

The midshot cuts to a long shot where the man in the reception addresses the guest saying that there is only few rooms and if they want to stay, the will have to book the room by now because the train stopped for an avalanche.

The long shot is cut to a mid shot where two english men has a conversation. This cut is done to show the reaction on the common folks present in the inn.

The mid shot cuts back to the long shot to show the interior of the inn exposing every people in sheer chaos inside the inn.

 The chaos that ensues fills the film’s first half-hour with comedy presented through misunderstandings, farcical situations and witty remarks from the British inhabitants. 

 Hitchcock’s development of a reassuring artifice is crucial to the overall structure of the film in which not only the audience but the film’s characters, must feel a sense of security. Thus, the theme of an unsuspecting hero gains both ground and credibility.


Typically, a narrative begins with one situation; a series of changes occur according to a pattern of cause and effect; finally, a new situation arises that brings about the end of the narrative.

With the use of humor, Hitchcock establishes a sense of security and lightheartedness in which the film’s two main characters are introduced.

Effortlessly flirty, moneyed, sophisticated and self-confident,” the film’s leading lady Iris Henderson, played by Margaret Lockwood, is comically introduced standing on a table in her underwear addressing the unlucky help.

Charming, raffish, almost rakish, cheeky, naughty yet nice scholar who moves whimsically between recreating and recording bizarre folk rituals and romancing, ironizing, doubting, aiding, comforting, and leading his love interest.

As a result, both the leading female and hero are made relatable. The audience may be able to view themselves in these characters, or possibly know people similar to them.

The set of all the events in a narrative, both the ones explicitly presented and those the viewer infers, constitute the story.

Presenting the main characters as relatable was of critical importance in Hitchcock’s portrayal of the film’s theme of an unsuspecting hero. In order for an audience to draw an emotional connection to the developing plot and conflicted characters, there must be an understanding of how or why an unsuspecting hero emerges from unexpected chaos.

Thus, Hitchcock’s heavy use of humor was centralized over an effort to make the film’s characters relatable for one sole purpose: to make the audience as involved and intertwined with the twists and turns of the plot as the film’s hero, Gilbert, is.

Most patterns of plot development depend heavily upon the ways that causes and effects create a change in a character’s situation. The most common general pattern is a change in knowledge. Very often, a character learns something in the course of the action, with the most crucial knowledge coming at the final turning point of the plot

Gilbert’s failure to be the time’s stereotypical masculine, aggressive hero allows room for an audience to relate to his imperfect characteristics and faults.
In connection to  constant use of humor as a filmic element, Gilbert embodies realistic reactions to the plot’s chaos.

 Gilbert moves easily between comedy and crisis, amity and action, emotion and intellection, Through these imperfect characteristics, the film’s unsuspecting hero may alternate from both humor and chaos in a relatable and fluent fashion.


The agents of cause and effect are characters by triggering and reacting to events, characters play roles within the film’s formal system.

Hitchcock’s fluent transitions from humor to horror reveal his understanding of the close relationship between the two filmic elements.

Hitchcock uses transitions in mood with the intention of emotionally captivating the audience. Often focused on by the iconic director, emotionally enthralling the audience allowed movie-goers to not only relate to the film’s heroes, but to care about them as well. As a result, Hitchcock used rapid transitions from humor to horror to best portray the film’s overall theme.

"I think the public taste is turning to like comedy and drama more mixed up… and this is another move away from the conventions of the stage… In a film you keep your whole action flowing; you have comedy and drama running together and weave them in and out. Audiences are more ready now than they used to be for a sudden change of mood”
~ Hitchcock, during 1937 while making The Lady Vanishes

In film narrative, however, space for a spectator, reconstructing story order from the plot might be seen as a sort of game.


Hitchcock’s transition from humor to horror reached its most potent shift during the film’s encounter with the enemy force. Soon after Miss Froy is discovered, her kidnappers remove the train’s dining cart from the rest of the train and violently place it under gun-fire. As the British passengers begin to fight back, Mr. Todhunter, the film’s paranoid attorney, loses his nerve. Ignoring the warnings of the other passengers, he states, “If we give ourselves up, they daren't murder us in cold blood. They're bound to give us a trial.” With a white handkerchief in hand, he walks out of the train towards the enemy. As soon as he's spotted, Mr.Todhunter is shot in the back and killed.

 The sudden act of violence presented in the film’s climactic scene ultimately removes any trace of Hitchcock’s previously established light-hearted tone and instead brings forth a sense of dread. As the first scene to present any harm to the film’s characters, our unsuspecting hero is jolted from false security that had been established largely through humor. 

At the end in the climax, we are made to realize that in The Lady Vanishes that what disturbed us initially (the disappearance of governess Froy) pales in comparison with the darker dangers that lurk ahead (the false sense of security of the prosperous…)

 The film’s unsuspecting hero was faced with one of Hitchcock’s most observed motifs, the sudden impingement of menace into everyday life. Hitchcock’s heavy use of humor throughout the film allowed for a darker repercussion upon its eventual absence.



REFFERENCE

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/508-the-lady-vanishes-all-aboard
To watch the film