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THE LADY VANISHES by ETHEL LINA WHITE

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The “The Lady Vanishes” (1938), is one of the most beautiful films of Alfred Hitchcock along with the “39 steps”, the state of the art, of the so called English period of his career. 1936 the duet of Sidney Gilliat and Frank Lauder (later on well-known directors, as well as screenwriters), revised for the big screen the novel of Ethel Lina White “The Wheel Spins”, through which they wished to denounce the external politics of the isolation of Chamberlain regarding what was going on in Europe. The film was about to be made by Roy William Neal, when the second crew that had gone to Yugoslavia for some shots on site, was chased out of the country and therefore, the production had to stop for a while, to continue two years later under the direction of Hitchcock, who had a contract for one more picture with the company Gaumont British. There is no doubt, though, that the English maitre has found in this picture things which interested him in particular, such as the testing of the logic of the viewer, the adoration of the director to trains, but also this unique combination of humor and suspense, something which makes Hitchcock a master in this kind.
The “The Lady Vanishes” relies as a plot in what Hitchcock calls a “MacGaffin”: “It is a gimmick as we call it. Here goes the MacGaffin story: you are aware that Kipling was writing pretty often about India and the Englishmen who were fighting against the natives of that country in the Afghanistan’s frontiers. In all these spy stories the main theme was the stealing of the plans of the fortress. The fortress is “MacGaffin”. So, we have given the name MacGaffin to all of this kind of adventures: stealing of papers or documents, of secret plans… it is not of any importance. The rational ones, would torture themselves in vain to find the truth which lies in a MacGaffin, since there is no any importance behind it. I have always been thinking that in my job the “papers”, the “documents” or the “plans of a fortress” must be of great importance as the characters of the movie were involved, but none to me, the narrator” (From the book “Hitchcock / Triffaut”, Publication Hipsilon). MacGaffin, in the mentioned picture is a spy message, which is delivered into a coded music line to Mrs. Froy, and old governess, who leaves by train from one country of the Balkans with the destination of London, but during this trip, she disappears. The whole intrigue constitutes a challenge in common sense. Hitchcock observes: “If we remember our apparent friends, they could wonder why we would trust a message to an old lady who could be easily terminated? Or again, why these people of the anti- espionage did not send the message with a trained pigeon?” Once again the English maitre challenges the common sense of the viewer as to test it, by setting an ingenious game between the apparent and the truth, where nothing is accidental.


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