Night Train to Munich [VHS]
The unofficial sequel toThe Lady Vanishes(also scripted by Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat) attempts to recapture the thrills of Hitchcock's charming confection of espionage and romance with generally fine results. Margaret Lockwood reprises her role as the flighty heroine, now the daughter of a Czech scientist captured by the Nazis as her father leaves the country. She escapes from a concentration camp with the help of a defiant male prisoner (Paul Henreid) and rejoins her father, only to be kidnapped back by the Germans, and then... Well, you get the idea. Rex Harrison costars as a seaside crooner who turns out to be a resourceful British Secret Service agent, whose stiff upper lip and school wit are handled with smiling aplomb. The headlong plot tosses the characters back and forth across the continent so rapidly the actors have little room to breath life into their roles, and director Carol Reed lacks Hitchcock's deftness and light touch, but Harrison's cocky, effusive charm helps enormously. Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne re-create their roles as blasé British tourists (when Britain declares war they, deep in the heart of Germany, worry about cricket and their golf clubs left behind in Berlin: "I'll never replace those," Radford mourns). Reed would find his stride after the war with such accomplished thrillers asOdd Man OutandThe Third Man. In light of those classics,Night Train to Munichis an inconsistent but wholly entertaining lark.--Sean Axmaker