The Lady Vanishes | |
---|---|
Genre | Drama |
Based on | The Wheel Spins 1936 novel by Ethel Lina White |
Screenplay by | Fiona Seres |
Directed by | Diarmuid Lawrence |
Starring | |
Theme music composer | John Lunn |
Country of origin | United Kingdom |
Original language | English |
Production | |
Producer | Ann Tricklebank |
Cinematography | Peter Greenhalgh |
Editor | David Head |
Running time | 87 minutes |
Production company | BBC |
Original release | |
Network | BBC One |
Release | 17 March 2013 |
The Lady Vanishes is a 2013 British television mystery thriller film directed by Diarmuid Lawrence, and a co-production of the BBC and Masterpiece Films. [1] It is based on the 1936 novel The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White. [2] It stars Selina Cadell in the role of the disappearing Miss Froy, Tuppence Middleton as the young Iris Carr (who discovers the disappearance but is not taken seriously), Tom Hughes and Alex Jennings as Max Hare and the Professor, the two fellow English passengers who come to her aid. It was watched by 7.44 million when it was broadcast on Sunday [3] 17 March 2013 on BBC One.
The film is less a remake of Alfred Hitchcock's 1938 film of the same name than a new interpretation of the novel, one based far more closely on it.[ citation needed ] It depicts a young English socialite, Iris Carr, travelling by train across 1930s Europe, returning to England from Croatia. She is alarmed by the mysterious disappearance of an English governess, Miss Froy, also travelling on the train. She enlists the help (initially given somewhat reluctantly) of the handsome young Max Hare, and his former Oxford Professor, who are travelling together on the train, for reasons unstated. As in the book (but unlike the 1938 version of the film), Miss Froy is merely what she appears, and not a British agent of MI6. The motive for her kidnap is not her secret intelligence service operations, but the fact that she witnessed a suspected murderer under circumstances that would have invalidated his alibi for the murder.
The setting of the remake is the luxury express passenger train from Croatia to Trieste, rather than in the original fictional country. An entire 1930s luxury passenger train interior, complete with sleeping carriages, a dining car, and a passenger bar and lounge car, were all recreated, to scale, [5] in Budapest for the production of the film. [6] [7] [8] [9] Diarmuid Lawrence, the director, makes an appearance, just as Hitchcock did. [6]
Dame Mary Louise Webster,, known professionally as May Whitty and later, for her charity work, Dame May Whitty, was an English stage and film actress. She was one of the first two women entertainers to become a Dame. The British actors' union Equity was established in her home in 1930.
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The Lady Vanishes is a 1938 British mystery thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave. Written by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder, based on the 1936 novel The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White, the film is about an English tourist travelling by train in continental Europe who discovers that her elderly travelling companion seems to have disappeared from the train. After her fellow passengers deny ever having seen the elderly lady, the young woman is helped by a young musicologist, the two proceeding to search the train for clues to the old lady's disappearance.
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