Critic Rating
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Director
Alfred Hitchcock
Cast
Margaret Lockwood,
Michael Redgrave,
May Whitty,
Paul Lukas,
Basil Radford,
Naunton Wayne
Genre
Mystery,
Thriller
When an avalanche blocks the railway, the passengers are forced to stay at a hotel in the fictional country of Bandrika. There, English tourist Iris Henderson befriends an elderly lady named Miss Froy. However, when the train is able to continue its journey, Iris wakes up to find that Miss Froy has disappeared.
An extremely enjoyable early entry from the master of suspense himself, Alfred Hitchcock. Features many charming British actors, including the fabulous Margaret Lockwood and Dame May Whitty, and Michael Redgrave is extremely likable as the roguish scamp who teams up with Lockwood to solve the film's central mystery.
TV Guide Magazine
This is one of Hitchcock's finest British films, a classic mystery that manages to combine humor with a genuine sense of menace--not to mention the kinds of characters that everyone dreams of meeting on a Central European train journey.
Time Out
Funny, creepy (in a way already peculiar to Hitchcock) and always entertaining, both in the moment and in the realisation that you’re enjoying a particularly witty and playful script.
Time
The Lady Vanishes exhibits Director Alfred Hitchcock, England's portly master of melodrama, at the top of his form.
Chicago Reader
This is vintage Hitchcock, with the pacing and superb editing that marked not only his 30s style but eventually every film that had any aspirations whatever to achieving suspense and rhythm.
The A.V. Club by Tasha Robinson
It's typical Hitchcock: taut, morbid, stylish, and determined to confound expectations all the way up to the final shot.
The New York Times by Frank S. Nugent
If it were not so brilliant a melodrama, we should class it as a brilliant comedy.
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
A pleasure.
The New Yorker by Pauline Kael
It is directed with such skill and velocity that it has come to represent the quintessence of screen suspense.
Chicago Tribune by Michael Wilmington
Trains are perfect settings for murder mysteries and thrillers. The best of them -- surpassing Murder on the Orient Express, The Narrow Margin, Runaway Train and dozens of others -- is Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes. [26 Nov 1999, p.A]
TV Guide Magazine by Staff (Not Credited)
This is one of Hitchcock's finest British films, a classic mystery that manages to combine humor with a genuine sense of menace--not to mention the kinds of characters that everyone dreams of meeting on a Central European train journey.
The Observer (UK) by Philip French
It's the greatest-ever comedy-thriller, the greatest film set on a train, a faultlessly cast mirror held up to the nation in the year of Munich.
Time Out by Staff (Not Credited)
Funny, creepy (in a way already peculiar to Hitchcock) and always entertaining, both in the moment and in the realisation that you’re enjoying a particularly witty and playful script.
Time by Staff (Not Credited)
The Lady Vanishes exhibits Director Alfred Hitchcock, England's portly master of melodrama, at the top of his form.
Chicago Reader by Don Druker
This is vintage Hitchcock, with the pacing and superb editing that marked not only his 30s style but eventually every film that had any aspirations whatever to achieving suspense and rhythm.
BBC
A crisply satisfying tale of espionage from cinema's master of suspense.
Variety
The story [from The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White] is sometimes eerie and eventually melodramatic, but it’s all so well done as to make for intense interest.
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