Spies have always existed, gnawing away at the tatters of society, like ticks on the underbelly of an elephant - and the cinema has always exploited our knowledge that they’re around. John Buchan once said about his writing: ‘Events defy probability, but march just inside possibility.’ With those eight words, he also summed up the secret of spy films. Their mixture of the commonplace with the extraordinary, the ease with which laughs turn into thrills, the way a coded secret can suddenly mean life or death for a group of innocent people.
Little wonder then, that story of The Lady Vanishes continues to remain such a favourite. Thriller, comedy and romance, all entwined round a plot involving spies and military secrets. With a beautiful heroine, an appealing hero and a train packed full of eccentrics, who can fail but to be seduced by the sublime blend.
Alfred Hitchcock’s classic original version of The Lady Vanishes (1938) quickly became established as one of the best-loved films of his career. Strangely enough, it was only by chance that Hitchcock was involved at all. Reaching the height of his British success, he could pick and choose his own projects. His usual, meticulous method was to find a story and then develop the project from this initial idea. Unable to find anything to really inspire him, however, it was Edward Black of Gainsborough Studios who suggested to Hitchcock a screenplay written by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder, and based on the novel ‘The Wheel Spins’ by Ethel L. White. The film had been first planned in 1936 when American director Roy William Neil had signed on. Some location work actually started in Yugoslavia during August of that year under the supervision of assistant director Fred Gunn. Unfortunately Gunn fractured an ankle and whilst he was in hospital the local police managed to get hold of the script. They thought the content was derogatory to their country and immediately had the entire crew thrown into jail before unceremoniously deporting them back to England. By contrast, Hitchcock never even contemplated going abroad for location shooting on The Lady Vanishes. The entire production was filmed in five weeks on a ninety-foot sound stage in Islington, North London.
During production, Hitchcock indulged in his usual practical jokes. One of his favourite ploys was to get out a stopwatch, which he used in attempts to intimidate the actors. Derrick de Marney recalled this during production of Young And Innocent in 1937: ‘Hitch rushed Nova Pilbeam and myself through the first scene and when “cut” was called he appeared to be sleeping. Then he opened his eyes wearily, looked at his stopwatch and said, “Too slow, I had that scene marked for thirty seconds and you took fifty. We’ll have to re‑take the scene.”’
With such a justifiable reputation, it’s understandable there was resistance to a re‑make. Initially planned as a feature for American television starring George C. Scott and Candice Bergen, the setting was changed to a train from Chicago to Los Angeles, with a revised plot updated to the present day and involving the Mafia. Eventually, the producers reverted to the original story but it was only with the financial muscle of Rank and the adjusted casting of Elliott Gould and Cybill Shepherd that it finally got under way.
Taken in isolation, the new version of The Lady Vanishes (1978) provides solid entertainment, with lush production values, a rich Richard Hartley score and a breezy George Axelrod script that accentuates the humour. There’s suspense, but it never gets too serious. How could it? The story is ridiculous. Why should a small granny be used as a top spy and why would the secrets be coded in the tune of a folksong? As Hitchcock said of the plot, ‘The first thing I throw out is logic.’
By contrast Sabotage (1936) is probably one of Hitchcock’s most disturbing films. On the original English release, critics and public alike were shocked and provoked by the all‑pervading sense of evil and helplessness (one reviewer became so incensed and upset by the film she even attempted to strike the director at the press showing). In Brazil, authorities went to the extreme of banning it completely, regarding the film an incitement to terrorism and a threat to public order. Its ability to shock remains today.
The story, based on a Joseph Conrad novel, concerns a small‑timer saboteur (Oscar Homolka), whose cover is as the owner of a London cinema. He lives an outwardly normal, contented life with wife (Sylvia Sydney) and her younger brother (Desmond Tester). After an initial attempt at disrupting the capital’s electricity supply, which results in unintended hilarity for the city’s population, Homolka’s superiors force him to become more ruthless ‑ and plant a bomb. The most controversial sequence occurs when the innocent Tester is asked to deliver a package to the heart of Leicester Square, unaware that what he really carries is the bomb. The worst happens and it explodes, killing not only the boy but everyone on the packed bus on which he is travelling. ‘I made a serious mistake in having the little boy die. The public was resentful,’ Hitchcock said later.
There were a lot of personal touches from Hitchcock in the film. The greengrocer's shop was like the one his father had owned and he’d grown up in; the small West End cinema was just like the one where he spent so many days of his youth; and Simpson’s, where the detective has lunch, was in reality Hitchcock’s own favourite restaurant. He had difficulties with his producer, friend Ivor Montagu, when he wanted to incorporate a real tram into the huge outdoor street set built for the film. Montagu complained it wasn’t worth the cost, and emotions became so heated that after the completion of shooting the two men met only once again before Hitchcock’s death in 1980. Hitchcock got his tram: a line was laid from the Lime Grove studios to a siding off White City. It cost £3,000 for the one day of shooting.
Sabotage is a striking, cinematic tour de force, framed and lit with drama, intensifying the tension. It’s also an strangely melancholic piece, able to be one moment tense, the next desperately sad. One famous example of this is in the dinner scene, despite the initial problems caused by the leading lady. Sylvia Sydney had been brought over from Hollywood by co‑producer Michael Balcon especially for the film, and was used to an American methodology whereby scenes would be shot in their entirety from different angles. She certainly wasn't prepared for Hitchcock's technique of shooting everything in small sections and then putting it together like a jigsaw during the edit. In the dinner scene, she kills Homolka with a carving knife as they sit to eat, but the filming became too much for her: half-hysterical, she broke down and ran crying from the set. It was only when she saw the final print that she realized what Hitchcock had been doing. Delighted and amazed, she stood up in the viewing theatre and exclaimed: “Hollywood much hear of this!’
