Quick take: The Lady Vanishes

Befitting its name, Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes is light as a feather. Though it's more comedy than suspense, its mystery keeps the story compelling while the script and performances provide comic relief. The film starts in a fictional Northern European country as a mixed group of tourists are waylaid at a small mountain inn and then scramble to get on a train that will take the British passengers toward home. Then the eponymous lady disappears, and no one is quite who we thought they were.

Of course, we've seen that kind of premise a million times, and this is a 70-year-old movie made on a tiny set with projected scenery outside the windows. The ancient sound is as good as it could be, given this is a Criterion Collection DVD, but it's still impossible to hear all the lines. Yet there's enough to think and laugh about in four out of five lines that the fifth would just be icing on the cake. The barely veiled references to European politics in the lead-up to World War II, which are explained further in the DVD extras, are fascinating.

This isn't just a droll little English film. It's laugh-out-loud funny. And Hitchcock makes it all look easy.