Whisky Galore! (Alexander Mackendrick, 1949)

Cast: Basil Radford, Catherine Lacey, Bruce Seton, Joan Greenwood, Wylie Watson, Gordon Jackson, Gabrielle Blunt, Jean Cadell, James Robertson Justice. Screenplay: Compton MacKenzie, Angus MacPhail, based on a novel by MacKenzie. Cinematography: Gerald Gibbs. Art direction: Jim Morahan. Film editing: Joseph Sterling, Charles Crichton. Music: Ernest Irving.

Alexander Mackendrick was unhappy with his first feature as a director, saying that it looked like "a home movie." But Whisky Galore! was a huge and enduring success, perhaps thanks in large part to its editors, Joseph Sterling and the uncredited Charles Crichton, who reassembled its footage and even had some additional takes shot, after initial dissatisfaction from Ealing Studios. In fact, the film helped launch Ealing as one of the major forces in what has come to be known as a kind of golden age of British film comedy, and Mackendrick went on to make two more hit comedies, The Man in the White Suit (1951) and The Ladykillers (1955), in that era. Whisky Galore! is the story of the residents of an island in the Outer Hebrides who face calamity when wartime shipping blockades deprive them of a vital necessity, the water of life itself, whisky. And then a cargo ship carrying cases of the stuff hits the rocks nearby, is abandoned by its crew, and shunned by salvage authorities. Only the determined Capt. Waggett of the Home Guard stands between the townsfolk and the shipwreck. Waggett, played by Basil Radford, is a stern by-the-books man, despite the fact that no one, including his wife, takes him seriously. There's a subplot involving two sisters, played by Joan Greenwood and Gabrielle Blunt, and their suitors, played respectively by Bruce Seton and Gordon Jackson, but most of the film is about the clash between what authority Capt. Waggett can muster and the efforts of the people to get at the whisky.

The Lady Vanishes (Alfred Hitchcock, 1938)

Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne in The Lady Vanishes

Iris Henderson: Margaret Lockwood
Gilbert: Michael Redgrave
Dr. Hartz: Paul Lukas
Miss Froy: May Whitty
Mr. Todhunter: Cecil Parker
"Mrs." Todhunter: Linden Travers
Caldicott: Naunton Wayne
Charters: Basil Radford
Baroness: Mary Clare
Hotel Manager: Emile Boreo
Blanche: Googie Withers
Julie: Sally Stewart
Signor Doppo: Philip Leaver
Signora Doppo: Selma Vaz Dias
The Nun: Catherine Lacy
Madame Kummer: Josephine Wilson

Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Screenplay: Sidney Gilliat, Frank Launder
Cinematography: Jack E. Cox

There are those who think that Alfred Hitchcock never surpassed The Lady Vanishes when it comes to the romantic comedy thriller. From the opening sequence of an obviously miniature Eastern European village to the concluding scene in which Miss Froy delightedly reunites with Iris and Gilbert, it's an utterly engaging movie. If I happen to prefer North by Northwest (1959), it may be only because Cary Grant is a greater movie star than Michael Redgrave and James Mason a more suavely subtle villain than Paul Lukas, and of course the thrills -- the crop-dusting scene, the Mount Rushmore chase -- are done more deftly (not to say expensively) and with greater sophistication. Because virtually everything in The Lady Vanishes works: There's real chemistry between Redgrave and Margaret Lockwood; May Whitty is a delight as the geriatric spy; the notion of a song being the MacGuffin is witty; Caldicott and Charters are the perfect ambiguously gay duo; and there's a nun in high heels who pauses to fix her makeup. It also has a genuinely serious subtext: 1938 was a year fraught with tension, and when Caldicott and Charters are preoccupied with getting the news from England, our first thought is that it has to do something with the threat of war and not with a cricket test match. The satiric glances at the insular Brits are also underscored by the relationship of Todhunter and his mistress, escaping to a place where nobody knows them to conduct their affair, and even by Gilbert's blithe preoccupation with collecting information about the native folk dances of the Bandrikans, who might indeed be next after the Czechs to be swallowed up by the Third Reich. 

Jamaica Inn (Alfred Hitchcock, 1939)

According to Stephen Whitty's excellent The Alfred Hitchcock Encyclopedia, the director thought Jamaica Inn "completely absurd" and didn't even bother to make his familiar cameo appearance in it. Hitchcock was right: It's a ridiculously plotted and often amateurishly staged film -- although Hitchcock must take some of the blame for the scenes in which characters sneak around talking in stage whispers and pretending they're hidden from their pursuers when they're in plain sight for anyone with average peripheral vision. Much of Hitchcock's attitude toward the film has been ascribed to his clashes with Charles Laughton, who was an uncredited co-producer and resisted any attempts by the director to rein in one of his more ridiculous performances. As Sir Humphrey Pengallan, the county squire and justice of the peace who is secretly raking in a fortune by collaborating with smugglers who loot shipwrecked vessels after murdering their crew, Laughton wears a fake nose and oddly placed eyebrows and hams it up mercilessly. Maureen O'Hara, in her first major film role, struggles with a confusingly written character who sometimes displays fire and initiative and at other times seems alarmingly obtuse. The rest of the cast includes such stalwarts of the British film and stage as Leslie Banks, Emlyn Williams, and Basil Radford, with a surprising performance by Robert Newton as the movie's romantic lead, Jem Traherne, an agent working undercover to expose the smugglers. You look in vain at the young Newton for traces of his terrifying Bill Sykes in Oliver Twist (David Lean, 1948) or his Long John Silver in Treasure Island (Byron Haskin, 1950). The production design is handsome, and the film begins with an exciting storm at sea, but the screenplay, based on a Daphne Du Maurier novel and written by the usually capable Sidney Gilliat and Joan Harrison, quickly falls apart. Hitchcock's last film in England, Jamaica Inn was a critical flop but a commercial success.