The Lady Vanishes (2013) Reviews

• Strangered on a Train

  Lejink2013-03-21

  I probably made a mistake in coming to this most recent remake of "The Lady Vanishes" just days after watching Hitchcock's definitive 1939 version. There's just no comparison. Hitch's version was fast moving, exciting, suspenseful, funny and sexy while this version was by contrast, turgid, dull, predictable, humourless and staid. The central character of Iris garners no interest from the viewer right from the start and quite why she's made to fall down a steep hill after witnessing a scene between the illicit lovers "Mr & Mrs Todmorton" is anyone's guess. Anyway, back at the hotel she throws a strop and decides to let her so called friends return to England before her, although within a day she's hey-presto on the next train herself, free spirit that she is. There she bumps into a friendly middle-aged woman who befriends her in the face of foreign frostiness, before the latter makes like the title and precipitates her attempts to find her and save her from a dastardly fate. Only thing is you get no sense of connection between Iris and Miss Froy, in fact the latter witters on so much that if she sat next to me on a train I'd welcome any chance I got to escape her attentions. Moreover there's no mystery at all, the Hitchcock reveal of Miss Froy's writing her name in the condensation of the train window substituted for an English newspaper discarded in her compartment. There's no mysterious nun to alert suspicion, the romance between Iris and the professor's young assistant appears out of thin air while the rescue conclusion is wholly devoid of thrills. I didn't feel the cast did much to lift an already stodgy production either, but the starriest players ever couldn't have made this dead duck fly. In trying, I presume to distance itself from being a slavish copy of the famous original it seemed to completely forget it was meant to be a romantic comedy-thriller. Now excuse me while I try to forget I ever saw this whole dreary programme...

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• Meritless version which drains all the excitement, humour and watchability.

  blakedw2013-03-18

  I don't know if this is more faithful to the original book than the famous Hitchcock version. But if it is, it shows extraordinary vision of him to have seen the material for a good movie in this boring nonsense. Wholly without humour or tension, I see it has an estimated budget of £1850. Even at that priced, the BBC was swindled. This is one of those films where it is a real strain to write the required 10 lines of comment because all one can say is it is boring. The events before the start of the train journey are truncated so we get no sense of the purpose underlying the plot. Nor is there any sexual tension in the relationships. Although too long, it feels that some key scenes necessary to understanding the role of some characters must be missing. Or maybe those characters have no role and are just there to pad out the numbers. The actors cannot be blamed for any of this. Tuppence Middleton is beautiful and makes the best of her part. Others are either competent or better, with none of the odd comic standup turns which often disfigure remakes like the ITV Marple series. So all the blame has to go to the writer, Fiona Seres and the director, Diarmuid Lawrence. And to the BBC for not throwing this in the bin rather than on to our screens. Whatever you do, do not let this tedious waste of time discourage you from finding and watching the brilliant Hitchcock original.

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• The Lady Vanished and so did the story

  paul-curtis19562013-03-18

  I should say that the excellent cast should in no way feel any responsibility for this flop of a remake, after all you can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear. However the writer should be commended not only for the Lady Vanishing but also the iconic characters, Charters and Caldicott, on top of which they also managed to Vanish any hint of suspense. I can only assume that they had never seen the original 1938 version of the British comic thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock and Written by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launderand. This classic starred Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave and was both critically acclaimed as a masterpiece and was a box office smash. In fact even director Anthony Pages 1979 remake, though a pale imitation of Hitchcock's original, was a far superior offering than the one served up in this adaptation.

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• A neat pairing with the 1938 Hitchcock Masterpiece

  alfa-162013-03-30

  For comparison, I have always hankered after another, more faithful adaptation of Strangers on a Train. The Highsmith original is on a completely different psychological plane to Hitchcock's superb adaptation, which plays with the banality of evil theme but adds ticking, suspenseful timebombs and a hero who may have moments of weakness but triumphs in the end. The 2013 version of The Lady Vanishes will have to do instead. It is NOT a remake nor a version of nor even based on the Hitchcock film. Far from it. Bemoaning the absence of Charters and Caldicott misses the point entirely. This film is a much straighter adaptation of Hitchcock's original source material, The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White. Even if this new production were rubbish, as a close adaptation of the original source, it would still offer worthwhile study by providing an illustration of how much craft the master added to create one of the best films of the 1930's. Let's face it, no one has read the novel. Hitch turns an essay in nervousness about more trouble in the Balkans into an appeasement era allegory of the difficulty of shaking people out of an apathetic response to tyranny and the virtues of resistance, all dressed in beautifully tailored cinematic clothes that will last forever. Diarmuid Lawrence's The Lady Vanishes, however, is very far from rubbish. It has a powerful, beautifully judged central performance from an actress who, unlike Cybill Shepherd in what WAS a remake in 1979, is in the same class as Margaret Lockwood. In the initial scenes she is part of a group of what the newspapers called Bright Young Things but Evelyn Waugh called Vile Bodies. She is able to stand out from her awful, shallow friends, however, with suggestions of an open mind and a wider view of the world. Without falling into clichés, Middleton distances herself in an afternoon and evening of misbehaviour then separates herself entirely by staying behind when her friends leave. This turns out to be an empty gesture. After a failed attempt at adventure, she immediately returns to type missing her friends, refusing offers of company, throwing money around at the locals and falling back into the character of a rude, spoilt mademoiselle, shorn of her comforts. This sets up the irony of her behaviour on the train when she finally discovers what it is that is truly different about her. However now, for a variety of reasons, people who can see the difference can't acknowledge it and people who can't see the difference misinterpret her. The only person who has understood her correctly has vanished. Lawrence's version holds on to this subtle psychological setup much longer than Hitchcock's. Those who think she's hysterical plot to sedate her. Those who know she isn't, hide themselves. Middleton's work is a real treat. The rest of the cast may not have enough to work with (one of the reasons why Hitchcock conducted a major rewrite). And instead of a graceful denouement, the action does rather hit the buffers at the end of the line. Very nice lwork in the last scene, though, more reminiscent of North by North West. However, despite a few shortcomings, this is a neat piece of period drama in its own right and casts a bright and valuable sidelight on Hitchcock's work as an adapter. No one should put off by misguided criticism that it fails to live up to Lockwood and Redgrave. Unlike the 1979 rehash, it has earned its place on the shelf next to the Hitchcock version of the same novel.

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• Rubbish!..

  Adams59052013-03-17

  My God this was so awful, I barely know where to start!..This was a period piece, and yet some of the dialogue was pure 21st century 'smart-speak'. People did not feel 'empathy' in pre-war Britain (and would certainly never had admitted feeling such to strangers if they had). The scriptwriters seem to have forgotten the separate meanings and contextual uses of 'will' and 'shall', and the accents were Estuarine in the extreme. There was far too much breathless 'gushing' by our heroine (who ever thought to cast Middleton in this role anyway?.. She hasn't the screen presence nor the ability to convey any sort of emotion other than a rather hollow & supercilious haughtiness), and Tom Hughes (Max Hare) simply carried on where he left off in 'Dancing on the Edge'...The only characters with any sort of screen credulity were the Reverend and his wife, and even they had to be given a paper-thin sideplot to flesh out their presence...Rhind-Tutt was completely wasted, and even Stephanie Cole's attempts at caustic wit were cheap and shallow...Where was the menacing threat of Hitchcock's original?..The whole thing reeked of hurried, seedy amateurism...I thought the 1979 remake with Gould and Shepherd was bad, but even that production had some saving graces (remember Arthur Lowe & Ian Carmichael as the two cricket-mad Englishmen). The main question is why bother making it at all?.. A shabby remake, poorly thrown together, with a second-no, make that a third-rate cast.

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