One of many things I love about Hitchcock movies is the use of terrific camera work -- a scene so clever or well-shot that I stop to appreciate it regardless of how engrossed I am in the storyline. The best example would be the "Strangers on a Train" scene where Farley is playing a tennis match, and you see the crowd's gaze moving left to right, following the ball, all except for Bruno, who's staring at Farley. Creepy.
In "The Lady Vanishes," I thought the standout moment was when the noise in the train picks up, and Miss Froy slowly traces her name on the train window. Iris had just woken up, and Miss Froy was babbling about her million Mexicans, and all that context made me think on first viewing that the scene was just a dream. It was an interlude into the surreal part of the film, and I found the camera work to be clever.
8 comments:
I liked the window scene, too — how it played out. Wasn't it kind of goofy, though, how the woman saw the writing on the window, jarring her memory of the event, but then as soon as the light was back and you couldn't see the writing she gave up hope on that bit of proof?
I thought something happened to clean off the window. Did I just imagine that?
Yes, I think there was a blast of air or steam that erased the writing. But it was kind of silly ... even if she could have shown others the writing, they would have dismissed it as part of her delusion post-injury -- something that she'd done earlier herself.
Although, now that I think back on it, was the window open? The dirt or dust was on the inside, so the burst of steam wouldn't have cleared it unless the window was open. And windows on steam trains usually weren't open because of the possibility of cinders coming in.
And good point, cl, about the passengers thinking she had done it herself in her delusions.
I should have put "delusions" in scare quotes, since she wasn't really deluded.
A blast of air from where? On the INSIDE of the dining-car window? Froy wrote her name in dust so thick on the inside of the window that it was clearly legible in the proper lighting. Why would that disappear? And it does matter because it's a flaw in the filmmaking if we are supposed to believe it just disappeared like that. Didn't they go through a tunnel right about that time? Didn't it get really dark?
When they went through the tunnel, it was visible because it became darker in the car than it was outside (I'm not sure why). Then there was a blast of steam or air or something and the writing disappeared. I'm not sure if it was supposed to indicate that the writing had been blown away, but it seemed like it.
Hmm. I didn’t think the whole writing on the window bit was all so good. Knowing that this was a Hitchcock film, it was obvious when she wrote that the writing was going to be used later. Much too obvious. And then its disappearance or just being dropped wasn’t properly unaccounted for as you have just noted.
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