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FILM 1300: THE LADY VANISHES

TRIVIA: In Hitchcock/Peter Bogdanovich Interview, Alfred Hitchcock revealed that Lady Vanishes was inspired by that legend of an Englishwoman who went with her daughter to the Palace Hotel in Paris in the 1880's, at the time of the Great Exposition. The woman was taken sick and they sent the girl across Paris to get some medicine, in a horse-vehicle, so it took about four hours, and when she came back she asked, "How's my mother?" "What mother?" "My mother. She's here, she's in her room. Room 22." They go up there. Different room, different wallpaper, everything. And the payoff of the whole story is, so the legend goes, that the woman had Bubonic plague and they dare not let anybody know she died, otherwise all of Paris would have emptied. That was the original situation and pictures like Lady Vanishes were all variations on it.

François Truffaut claimed this movie was his favorite Hitchcock and the best representation of Alfred Hitchcock's work.

The failure of the original copyright holder to renew the film's copyright resulted in it falling into public domain, meaning that virtually anyone could duplicate and sell a VHS/DVD copy of the film. Therefore, many of the versions of this film available on the market are either severely (and usually badly) edited and/or of extremely poor quality, having been duped from second- or third-generation (or more) copies of the film.

The fictitious country where most of the story takes place is named in the movie: in her first scene, Miss Froy says, "Bandrika is one of Europe's few undiscovered corners." The first two stations in the movie are identified by briefly visible signs, and the third in dialog: they are Zolnay, Dravka, and Morsken.

Director Cameo: Alfred Hitchcock:  near the end of the movie at Victoria Station wearing a black coat and smoking a cigarette.