One night in 1889 a young Englishman named Johnny Barton mysteriously vanishes from his hotel room in Paris, where he has travelled with his sister Vicky to see the Exposition Universelle. And it's not just Johnny who vanishes. His hotel room, No. 19, appears to have vanished as well, with just a blank wall where it used to be. When a distraught Vicky questions the hotel management she is told that they have never heard of a person named Johnny Barton and that Vicky arrived at the hotel alone; as evidence they show her the hotel register, which contains Vicky's signature but not Johnny's.
In desperation Vicky, who believes that her brother must have been either murdered or kidnapped, goes to see first the British consul and then the police. They are sympathetic, but warn Vicky that they cannot investigate until she has some hard evidence to back up her story. The hotel proprietors hint that Vicky is either mad or has invented a story about her brother to avoid paying her hotel bill. Her luck turns when she meets an English painter named George Hathaway who remembers speaking to Johnny, who lent him 50 francs to pay a cab fare, in the hotel bar the previous evening. George resolves to help Vicky solve the mystery.
I remember reading in a magazine once that this film was based upon a true story, but the truth appears to be that it was never more than a 19th-century urban legend. There have been several other treatments of the legend in film and fiction, but in most of these it is the young woman's mother rather than her brother who disappears. The best-known treatment is probably Alfred Hitchcock's "The Lady Vanishes", although Hitchcock makes some important changes to the story. In his version the older woman and the younger one are not mother and daughter, the action takes place not in a Parisian hotel but on board a train passing through an unnamed country and the final solution to the mystery is very different. Hitchcock's aim was to alert the British public to the dangers of Nazism, even if for political reasons Germany could not be explicitly named. In the same year, 1938 the Germans produced their own, much more traditional, film of the legend under the title "Verwehte Spuren" ("Vanished Tracks").
"So Long at the Fair", in fact, is a thriller with a lot in common with Hitchcock's work. The reviewer who said that it was not violent enough for Hitch was wide of the mark- by no means all of Hitchcock's films contain explicit violence. The Master might have made a few changes to the story- he would probably have had Vicky played by a blonde rather than the brunette Jean Simmons and would probably have written out George's girlfriend Rhoda in order to introduce a romance between George and Vicky. He might also have updated the action to the present day, as period drama was never his forte. ("Under Capricorn" is not one of his best films, and "Jamaica Inn" one of his worst).
Nevertheless, the atmosphere of paranoia and suspicion and the theme of a young woman trying to prove her own sanity and to uncover what she believes to be a sinister conspiracy both seem very Hitchcockian. The "balloon" scene when Vicky and the consul go in search of a waitress who might be able to prove her story is a classic piece of suspense. The luminously beautiful Simmons is wonderful as Vicky, and she receives good support from Dirk Bogarde as the resolute and chivalrous George and from Cathleen Nesbitt as the plausible but sinister hotel owner Madame Hervé. Even after Hitchcock departed these shores for Hollywood, something of his spirit remained in Britain. 7/10
In desperation Vicky, who believes that her brother must have been either murdered or kidnapped, goes to see first the British consul and then the police. They are sympathetic, but warn Vicky that they cannot investigate until she has some hard evidence to back up her story. The hotel proprietors hint that Vicky is either mad or has invented a story about her brother to avoid paying her hotel bill. Her luck turns when she meets an English painter named George Hathaway who remembers speaking to Johnny, who lent him 50 francs to pay a cab fare, in the hotel bar the previous evening. George resolves to help Vicky solve the mystery.
I remember reading in a magazine once that this film was based upon a true story, but the truth appears to be that it was never more than a 19th-century urban legend. There have been several other treatments of the legend in film and fiction, but in most of these it is the young woman's mother rather than her brother who disappears. The best-known treatment is probably Alfred Hitchcock's "The Lady Vanishes", although Hitchcock makes some important changes to the story. In his version the older woman and the younger one are not mother and daughter, the action takes place not in a Parisian hotel but on board a train passing through an unnamed country and the final solution to the mystery is very different. Hitchcock's aim was to alert the British public to the dangers of Nazism, even if for political reasons Germany could not be explicitly named. In the same year, 1938 the Germans produced their own, much more traditional, film of the legend under the title "Verwehte Spuren" ("Vanished Tracks").
"So Long at the Fair", in fact, is a thriller with a lot in common with Hitchcock's work. The reviewer who said that it was not violent enough for Hitch was wide of the mark- by no means all of Hitchcock's films contain explicit violence. The Master might have made a few changes to the story- he would probably have had Vicky played by a blonde rather than the brunette Jean Simmons and would probably have written out George's girlfriend Rhoda in order to introduce a romance between George and Vicky. He might also have updated the action to the present day, as period drama was never his forte. ("Under Capricorn" is not one of his best films, and "Jamaica Inn" one of his worst).
Nevertheless, the atmosphere of paranoia and suspicion and the theme of a young woman trying to prove her own sanity and to uncover what she believes to be a sinister conspiracy both seem very Hitchcockian. The "balloon" scene when Vicky and the consul go in search of a waitress who might be able to prove her story is a classic piece of suspense. The luminously beautiful Simmons is wonderful as Vicky, and she receives good support from Dirk Bogarde as the resolute and chivalrous George and from Cathleen Nesbitt as the plausible but sinister hotel owner Madame Hervé. Even after Hitchcock departed these shores for Hollywood, something of his spirit remained in Britain. 7/10