Gist is a beautiful English tourist, Margaret Lockwood (a total babe [this was during Hitch's brunette phase]), travels by train across Europe with a motley cast of characters. Just before boarding the train, she takes a bump on the head and an elderly woman agrees to watch after her. In and out of consciousness, she awakens to find her companion has disappeared. The other passengers deny having ever seen her and gaslight her, saying she can't trust her own memory because of the blow to her head. She eventually employs the help of a musician, Michael Redgrave (who looks exactly like Paul Dano), whom she has had beef with going back to the hotel where the movie opens.
All the train stuff was filmed in a studio that used only one car for the entire shoot. Totally remarkable filmmaking.
The vanishing lady is something of a McGuffin that only sort of matters. The film gets a little bogged down with why she is being kidnapped and what have you.
Has a decent amount of humor to it. There is a great fight scene between Redgrave and Lockwood and this Italian magician who is in on the kidnapping. It takes place in the luggage area with all his magic props and a cardboard cutout of him looking on. The fight is realistic and terrible with a lot of slow choking and wild punching. The best comes after the magician has escaped being locked up through a trap door. Frustrated by the whole thing, Lockwood punches the cutout in the face.
Might be my all-time favorite train movie. Hitchcock is mostly associated with Strangers on a Train in this regard, but that really isn't a train movie. This takes place almost entirely on board.
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