Rent The Lady Vanishes (1938)

Screwball Thriller. - The Lady Vanishes review by Steve

It's 1938 and war in Europe is inevitable.  A diverse and disinterested assembly of British dilettantes, obsessives and eccentrics travelling by train through the Balkans, puts aside denial and appeasement and finally realise they must fight or die. This is a thriller from Alfred Hitchcock, but the premise is from the headlines.

In his film debut, Michael Redgrave plays a musicologist researching middle European folk music and becomes antagonistically entangled with Margaret Lockwood's pleasure-seeking it-girl on one last fling before marriage, and a dotty dowager/British agent who mysteriously goes missing.

Only Lockwood and Redgrave are willing to get involved, while they backchat and fall in love. This is a classic of Hitchcock's British years, but plenty of credit is due to Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat who developed the project. And they contribute a wonderful screwball script.

It's fast paced and suspenseful (naturally) with a brilliant cast of support characters, including the immortal cricket obsessed English everymen, Charters and Caldicott (Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne).  It's just so gloriously entertaining and the ultimate train thriller. One of the greatest UK films of the '30s.

Hitchcock Classic before he left for Hollywood - The Lady Vanishes review by AB

Proving that nobody does it like Hitchcock, this movie is a shining example of mystery and suspense without the need for gratuitous violence or other degeneracy so loved by the contemporary Hollywood scene. Those weaned on Tarantino will find it too tame - but lovers of such writers as Agatha Christie or Ngaio Marsh will have a lot of fun.

It's old but class is timeless. It is Hitchcock, after all. - The Lady Vanishes review by ND

All of the character acting is such a pleasure to watch, the supporting cast is peerless. The principal actors are superb. Of course you have to view some of the script with its age in mind. Things were different then, most especially attitudes towards women but this was three generations ago so it should feel different.

The direction is as good as you'd expect. The pace never flags, the story is well told and frankly, it has aged very well indeed. I commend it to you. By the way, it should never occur to you that it's 'only' in black and white, it doesn't matter at all.