Pun Salad

An Alfred Hitchcock movie from 1938, and it seems even older than that. It's an oddball mixture of romantic comedy, mystery, and spy thriller.

Young Iris is off in a central-European ski resort with a couple girlfriends, a last fling before she gets married. The night before she's due to leave, she meets up with a seemingly ditzy but pleasant elderly woman, Miss Froy (played wonderfully by Dame May Whitty). She also encounters (in fact, meets-cute) Gilbert (Michael Redgrave, father to Vanessa and Lynn), an irritating musician.

After they all pile on a train, Miss Froy—you might have guessed—vanishes mysteriously. Even more mysterious, a number of passengers in the compartment insist that that Miss Froy was a figment of Iris's imagination. Iris begins to doubt herself, but Gilbert believes in her. Their investigation reveals that nothing is as it seems.

The movie has a number of other colorful characters: a pair of Brits that are anxious to get word of an important cricket match, frustrated at every turn. And there are a couple of scandal-shy lovers married to other people; he turns out to be a total weasel.

Things move slowly. Today, they could fit this plot into a 60-minute episode of Bones.

Consumer note: the cover art/link at the right goes to the Criterion Collection edition of the movie. Which is not what Netflix sent; instead we got a cheapie from a no-name publisher containing an intro by Tony Curtis, stumbling over his trite cue card lines. Bleah.