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1935-42, PG, Network

The first volume of this series was disappointing, but this one is both valuable and entertaining. The first disc from pre-Michael Balcon days has the more significant films. The likable 18th-century children's naval yarn Midshipman Easy (1935) stars future TV star Hughie Green as an idealistic, naive teenager turning up trumps at sea and waving a cutlass ashore while serving on a Royal Navy sloop command by Roger Livesey. It's significant as the directorial debut of Carol Reed and welcomed by his future collaborator Graham Greene in his Spectator film column.

The other film, Brief Ecstasy (1937), directed by Edmond T Gréville, a French film-maker at home on both sides of the Channel, is a little gem about a handsome middle-class Englishman (Hugh Williams) and the attractive student (Linden Travers) with whom he has a one-night stand in London and then meets again five years later, when she's...

On top of a mesmerising plot, perfect casting and the greatest comic duo in British cinema, this comedy thriller derives special urgency from the troubled times in which it was made

Hitchcock and railways go together like a locomotive and tender. He loved them, they figure significantly in his work and never more so than in The Lady Vanishes. Much of what happens could only take place on a railway line – passengers delayed together by an avalanche; classes compartmentalised; strangers trapped together as they're transported across a continent; an engine driver killed in crossfire; a carriage disconnected and shunted on to a branch line; an intrepid hero struggling from one carriage to another outside a fast-moving train as other locomotives rush by; clues in the form of a name traced in the steam on a window, and the label on a tea packet briefly adhering to another window; and above...

Chicago – Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Lady Vanishes” isn’t one of his most heralded films. You don’t hear it mentioned on most lists of the best works of arguably the most influential director who ever lived. And yet it was the third film chosen for The Criterion Collection and has now been given the upgrade and joined the esteemed Blu-ray ranks of the most important collection in the history of home entertainment. If you’re unfamiliar with this witty, delightful gem of a thriller, there’s no other way to experience it for the first time. And if you’re a fan of Hitchcock’s more famous films, do yourself a favor by checking out one of his earliest.

Blu-Ray Rating: 5.0/5.0

“The Lady Vanishes” had actually been in production with a different director when Alfred Hitchcock came on board mostly to satisfy his British contract before heading to the States.