1938: The Lady Vanishes

Our young English heroine, about to get married, meets an old lady while getting on a train on her way home from a vacation in fascist Italy. The old lady suddenly disappears, and it seems none of the other passengers have seen her. Together with a playboy who seems to fancy her, she goes looking for the missing woman. - Though generally the kind of thing one calls "great for rainy Sunday afternoons", Hitchcock's last but one film before leaving for Hollywood suffers from special effects that are poor even by the standards of the time and a few lengths in the screenplay. Overall an agreeable experience, though. (6.5)