The Wicked Lady (Leslie Arliss, 1945)

Margaret Lockwood in The Wicked Lady

Cast: Margaret Lockwood, James Mason, Patricia Roc, Griffith Jones, Michael Rennie, Felix Aylmer, Enid Stamp-Taylor, Francis Lister, Beatrice Varley, Amy Dalby, Martita Hunt, David Horne, Emrys Jones. Screenplay: Leslie Arliss, Gordon Glennon, Aimée Stuart, based on a novel by Magdalen King-Hall. Cinematography: Jack E. Cox. Art direction: John Bryan. Film editing: Terence Fisher. Music: Hans May. 

Entertaining claptrap about a Restoration beauty (Margaret Lockwood) named Barbara who seduces the wealthy squire Sir Ralph Skelton (Griffith Jones) on the eve of his marriage to the virtuous Caroline (Patricia Roc). But having married Sir Ralph, Barbara quickly becomes bored with life in the country, dresses in men's clothes, sneaks out by a secret passage, and turns highwayman. This puts her in competition with (and the bed of) the notorious Capt. Jerry Jackson (James Mason), the terror of the county's roads. Eventually the wicked are punished and virtue is rewarded, of course. The story needs a little more tongue in cheek than writer-director Leslie Arliss is able to give it, but it moves along nicely. Mason, as usual, gives the standout performance.

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.