The Lady Vanishes – Two equally good versions

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It is always a mixed blessing when watching remakes of an original, especially when the original has the “Master of suspense”, Alfred Hitchcock’s stamp in various scenes. As always, Hitchcock’s “suspense movies” have one twist after the other, making you wonder what is the “MacGuffin” – the crux/ the core idea of the story.  There are three versions of this story, two of which are available on You Tube. The 2012 version seems to be unavailable on any online platform in India (though available on Amazon Prime USA).

The Lady Vanishes (1938)

Genre: Mystery/ “Spy Adjacent” thriller

Platform: You Tube

Time: 1 hour 35 minutes

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Cast: Margaret Lockwood (Iris Henderson). Michael Redgrave (Gilbert Redman). Paul Lukas (Dr. Egon Hartz). May Whitty (Miss Froy).


Plot:    Musicologist Gilbert Redman and Iris Henderson have had multiple feuds before they board a train in a European country Bandrika. Gilbert who has been around to document Bandrika’s folk music is clearly skeptical but is slowly convinced that there really was a Miss Froy, who had helped iris, when a brick , intended for Miss Froy, fell on her head, leading to everyone concluding that she is suffering the after effects of the ‘head injury’. Iris wonders why everyone is lying about not seeing Miss Froy, with whom she had been friendly. Iris suspects that there is some kind of conspiracy afoot to kidnap Miss Froy who isn’t someone she claims to be, a humble governess…

The film was entirely shot in studio and it is evident in the way most of the scenes have that ‘studio’ feel. That said, it is still one of the most playfully written screenplays by Hitchcock’s constant collaborator and wife, Alma Reville. There is an overall feeling of pulling the viewer by the nose and pointing in different directions. We know that everyone except Iris is clearly in on “some conspiracy” but we do not know what. The plot steadily accelerates to its climatic shootout and the bold and daring escape from “Bandrika” to “Switzerland”. Most of us can’t be sure whether the kindly, somewhat eccentric old woman could be a spy and she denies being one too but we are not too sure. The end reveals otherwise.

There are enough pointers to the “Hitchcock touch” – such as the huge close up of a mysterious hand slowly moving the brick to target Froy but which instead falls on Iris’s head. The supposedly spiked drinks which  the duo are about to drink where the glasses are in the foreground which we the audience know but not the unsuspecting lead duo. A mysterious ‘conjurer’ who almost kills the leading duo but after a few moments, smiles happily his way past the leading duo, leading the doctor to suspect that Iris has been suffering serious delusions; and so on.

For its time, Iris is shown as a somewhat ‘bold’ woman whose ideas of marriage are not exactly conventional as she hints at flings and is finally setting for matrimony with a supposedly straight but dull man. There are two cricket mad fanatics who are only intent on reaching England for a crucial test match and to hell with all the people on the train, including the missing woman and the “young woman making up a devil of a fuss”.  These are pre-WW2 Englishmen who are straight and narrow and will always do the right thing for England, come what may. There are also a couple on an illicit affair where the man doesn’t want to be found out as he is a judge. The film is an overall delightful film that has the right mix of suspense punctuated by peppy crackling dialogues and Free on You Tube

Script – 5 out of 5

Story – 4 out of 5

Direction – 5 out of 5

Photography – 5 out of 5

 

Total – 4.8 out of 5

The Lady Vanishes (1979)

Genre: Mystery/ “Spy Adjacent” thriller

Platform: You Tube

Time: 1 hour 39 minutes

Director: Anthony Page

Cast: Elliott Gould (Robert Condon). Cybill Shepherd (Mrs Amanda Kelly). Angela Lansbury (Miss Froy). Herbert Lom (Dr. Egon Hartz).

Plot:   American heiress Mrs Amanda Kelly is treated sympathetically by Miss Froy, due to her drinking antics ending up with a severe hangover, when they board a train in Nazi Germany. When Amanda wakes up from a nap in her compartment, everyone in the compartment denies ever seeing Miss Froy. Newspaperman Robert Condon is sure that this is a case of some kind of hangover inspired by Kelly’s binge drinking and also with Dr. Hartz’s suggestions that this could be due to Kelly’s antics the previous night, where her effort to mimic Hitler had met with the local SA’s displeasure who had literally thrown her overboard from the table where she was strutting. Kelly is sure that she has seen Miss Froy and something bad has happened to her…

When I saw this film on its initial release, at Sterling theatre, I was unaware that this was a remake of the Hitchcock film and enjoyed it. Years late I became aware of the original when I bought Donald Spoto’s book on Alfred Hitchcock. Sometime in the 1990s I saw the “original” and was pleasantly surprised how much the original and this color version were alike, almost to the point of being a scene by scene, shot by shot and even some line-by-line remake of the 1938 film. So; does it succeed? Admirably so.

There is a lightweight touch to the overall proceedings including keeping the same characters as the original, especially the cricket mad duo Charters and Caldicott. Then there is the illicit couple on an illicit weekend and other multiple characters. The film is tailored to then rising star Cybil Shepherd’s reputation as a ‘comedienne’ and she is excellent as the loud American heiress. Her comic timing more than makes up, to keep the overall atmosphere lightweight. The musicologist is replaced by a Life magazine photographer thus making both the lead characters American, to appeal to a larger (= American) audience while keeping the peripheral characters British. Nazi Germany is explicitly mentioned and lest someone thinks otherwise, there are enough shots of German soldiers and finally an SS officer in his all-black uniform, leaving no doubt that this is Nazi Germany and surely poor Miss Froy must have some vital secret about the upcoming war.

There are some superb shots of the “German train”, traversing the “German Bavarian landscape” – all the train scenes were shot in Austria and the Austrian Railways are thanked at the film’s ending. Since Shepherd has the better written role, she gets more time onscreen and like the original, she (and most other characters on the train), wear the same dress throughout the film which is free on You Tube

Script – 4 out of 5

Story – 4 out of 5

Direction – 4 out of 5

Photography – 4 out of 5

Total – 4 out of 5

1 comment on The Lady Vanishes – Two equally good versions

Seven Days in May – Two superb versions

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Dwight Eisenhower was the man who commanded the biggest military machine in Western Europe during World War 2.  With his superb political balance, he managed the disparate British, American and French commanders and produced an unquestionable victory. President Truman who decided to drop the Atomic Bomb on Japan was seen as ‘weak’ for letting the Korean War happen so much that Eisenhower was elected as President in 1953. But once inside ‘the system’, he often had grave misgivings about the rampant military machine which seemed unstoppable and was taking money and resources away from social programs. So much that in his farewell address, he cautioned against the ‘growing military industrial complex’. Here’s the link to the speech about Ike cautioning about the Military Industrial Complex which was probably the most prescient in its context and content , especially when seen through the lens of 21st century American rampages throughout the world.

He coined the term that has now become synonymous with huge arms deals and trillions of dollars being spent on weapons that overpromise and under deliver such as the F35 Lightning 2 JSF, one of which landed in Trivandrum a year ago and had to wait for three weeks for the support team to put it right. Ex military personnel usually join the military corporations through what is known as the ‘revolving door’ as they are extremely knowledgeable about the snakes and ladders process of the military buying system.  When President Kennedy became President, he had already promised to increase welfare spending and trim the excessive military budgets and decided to get out of Vietnam, where Americans were actually fighting though designated as “advisers”.

It is in this context that the book Seven Days in May was released in 1962 and became a bestseller. I read the book sometime in the early 1980s but couldn’t get the film at all; naturally; since its such a off beat subject and the video libraries of those days specialized in ‘action films’. In simple terms, the military feels that enough is not being spent on it by the civilians and so they plan a military coup with the fig lead of a “Constitutional Crisis due to the Presidential inability / enfeeblement” and similar mild mannered words. The Coup will be led by the Joint Chief of Staff (JCS), THE MOST powerful military man on earth, who can call upon all the four US military forces including the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines. The plan for the coup is under the cover of a military exercise where ‘opponents’ have seized control of the government and hence the exercise is to check how to take control back from the ‘opponents. The JCS’ s military aide, a ‘lowly’ Colonel, sees through it for what it is and sets in motion a plan to bring it down, even though he is torn between his conscience as a soldier who has to obey his superiors and his sworn oath to defend and uphold the Constitution.

Seven Days in May (1964)

Genre: Military Conspiracy thriller

Platform: You Tube

Time: 1 hour 55 minutes

Director: John Frankenheimer

Cast: Burt Lancaster (Gen. James Mattoon Scott). Kirk Douglas (Col. Martin ‘Jiggs’ Casey). Fredric March (President Jordan Lyman). Ava Gardner (Eleanor Holbrook).

Plot:    Its 1970 and the President has signed a disarmament treaty with the Soviet Union, leading to his ratings plummeting and the hawks calling for his resignation…

Gen. Scott, the JCS is vocally and publicly critical of the President’s policies and is soon plotting away with a group of civil and military conspirators to take over the Government till his aide Col. Casey finds out about the program. Casey is aided by his former lover and Scott’s mistress Eleanor and a dipsomaniac ex-Senator who wants to find out more about the ’exercise’.

The film surely must have set the cat among the pigeons , since it came out in the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination and the then recent Cuban Missile Crisis which almost started WW3. (American Air Force General Curtis LeMay repeatedly asked permission from President Kennedy to bomb Cuba with atomic weapons). The increasing involvement in Vietnam also found an echo with the ordinary people about a rampant and unchecked military doing only what it wants to keep the machine running. The black and white photography lends itself to the gloomy conspiratorial atmosphere where one good man Casey unravels everything about the conspiracy.

Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas starred in seven films, the final one being the action-comedy Tough Guys (1986) as two ex-cons trying to go straight. This is their fifth film together and the veterans really compete in the laurels for the acting chops. Frederic March’s hand wringing performance mirrors the then real life President Johnson who increasingly found himself escalating the Vietnam War , at the behest of his military advisers, most of whom still believe today, that they would have ‘won’, if not for silly ‘rules of engagement’. The then “state of art technology” may look like kludge/inelegant but was true for its time.

This is a tense superb thriller and mirrors the times and fears perfectly, pointing to Frankenheimer’s expertise in superb thrillers (The Manchurian Candidate had just been released in 1962).

The film is Free at below links:


An okay English print at Internet Archives
https://archive.org/details/7-days-in-may


Another okay You Tube English version
https://youtu.be/wq0pN1RhgcE

Good You Tube print but in Spanish (English subs can be turned on)

Script – 5 out of 5

Story – 4 out of 5

Direction – 5 out of 5

Photography – 5 out of 5

 Total – 4.8 out of 5

The Enemy Within (1994)

Genre: Military Conspiracy thriller

Platform: You Tube

Time: 1 hour 23 minutes

Director: Jonathan Darby

Cast: Forest Whitaker (Col. MacKenzie ‘Mac’ Casey). Jason Robards (Gen. R. Pendleton Lloyd). Sam Waterston (President William Foster).

This 1994 film is true to the spirit and letter of the novel and also has to live up to the 1964 film. In my view, this film is far better for its understated performances, especially that of Forest Whitaker as Casey who unravels the plot. Given that this is a 1994 upgrade and in colour, some digressions are a given such as Casey being a black officer, Casey’s son indulging in casual stealing from an electronics store and Casey and his wife trying to deal with it while Casey is simultaneously unraveling the plot. There are additional digressions in the shape of the Russians who help Casey – remember this was 1994 and Boris Yeltsin was seen as America’s friend while Russians viewed him as an American puppet and a plain stupid drunk politician (giving rise to Vladimir Putin and his continued rule from 1999 till date). None of these digressions take away from the core plot and in fact contribute to it.

The Russian head spy in Washington code named Jake (John Dzundza) agrees to help Casey as he doesn’t want a military government in power as it would bankrupt an already weak Russian economy. The ‘Russian agent’ who agrees to help Casey is a real surprise. As Casey, Forest Whitaker, gives one of his best performances as the man caught between his morals – between his superior officer and his promise to defend the Constitution. In keeping with the 1990s atmosphere there are some PCs , along with emails and cassettes for dictations.

Given the political shenanigans of Trump and the military at loggerheads and Trump trying to put ‘his’ people in place, the film is a better mirror of current times and holds far more relevance today.

The film is free on You Tube

Script – 5 out of 5

Story – 4 out of 5

Direction – 5 out of 5

Photography – 5 out of 5

 Total – 4.8 out of 5

One response to “Seven Days in May – Two superb versions”

  1. Robin Bhat avatar
    Robin Bhat

    Hi Rammesh,

    Please move the above review in your short-list of ‘My Best’ ! Have heard much about the book and the two films over a long time. All three now added to my ‘KVR List’.

    —
    “Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas starred in seven films” – this is great to know.. I was not aware..

    —
    Forest Whittaker – a superb actor… too many films to name… roles ranging from playing Idi Amin to the ‘Godfather of Harlem’, and much more.

    —-

    As to your comment on Trump and his minions, these headlines from just yesterday (June 6):

    “Residents of French village say US defense chief Hegseth not welcome for D-Day visit” and…

    “Pete Hegseth’s D-day speech on immigration condemned as ‘grotesque stupidity’ ”

    —
    One last point:
    ” President Kennedy….decided to get out of Vietnam” – probably a discussion to be had off-line.. but, as old – 60+ years – as this view is, it remains widely debated.. but it is true that ‘throughout the late 1950s (Eisenhower) and early 1960s (Kennedy and Johnson), the number of Special Forces military advisers increased steadily. Their job was to train South Vietnamese soldiers in the art of counter-insurgency…..”

    Of course, as we know, to the North Vietnamese across the paddy-fields, whether their Southern brethren or the Americans.. they were all the enemy, and to be eliminated.

    —

    Thanks… Robin

    Reply

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