Fog harbour fish house8/30/2023 ![]() It works better when he leaves us guessing. (What could it be? A Finno-Ugric language? :) Most of the time the identity of Hitchcock's villains remains deliberately vague, except in "Notorious" and "Torn Curtain," where they are nazis and communists respectively. ![]() As an amateur linguist, I found myself trying to make sense of the made-up "Bandrikan" spoken by the natives, but of course was unable to do so. Then she ends by saying, "That's all I can remember." Counters Redgrave dryly: "Well, you can't have been paying attention.") Much of the film's action occurs in the fictional country of Bandrika, which seems to be a thinly disguised stand-in for nazi-controlled Austria, so recently annexed by Hitler's Germany. (For example, Lockwood is asked to describe the missing Whitty and launches into an extremely detailed portrait that leaves not a single button unaccounted for. But we love it, as one witty exchange turns quickly into another. As the two are making their way through the train trying to locate Whitty, they move from one barely plausible predicament to another. One cannot help but enjoy seeing how the initial sparks flying between their clashing characters develop into true love by movie's end. ![]() Well, Lockwood and Redgrave definitely have it. Viewers always look for the chemistry or lack thereof between actors. But after this point the film really takes off, and one scarcely recalls the unpromising opening. Think also of the stick figure engulfed in the munitions factory explosion in "Saboteur." I suppose directors of that era had to do with whatever was available. A Lionel half buried in a heap of bleached wheat flower just doesn't cut it nowadays. I agree with the review who observes that we've become spoilt by more sophisticated special effects. Whether or not this was the first of the director's films to place its principal action on a moving train I cannot say, but it's a theme that would come back again in his later work, most notably in "Strangers on a Train." The film gets off to a somewhat rocky start with the camera panning over an Alpine inn and a train halted mid-journey by an avalanche. The plot is absorbing, the dialogue clever and the cast great. This is the best of the early Hitchcock films.
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