The mystery at the heart of this is so Hitchcock and is so enthralling you need to see what’s going on. This film had to either be inspired by Agatha Christie’s MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS which was released 4 years earlier. You can see the influence this film even has on the famous 1974 film adaptation of that book. The main issue of the film is that there are a lot of issues. The music feels out of place for the film at times, moments are played strictly for comedy beats, especially all of the Charters and Caldicott moments, but these clash with the seriousness of the missing woman. The first act goes on for entirely too long and is a little muddled due to the fact we are introduced to Charters and Caldicott first and spend so much time with them. Characters behave unlike real people (like when Charters and Caldicott don’t agree to seeing the missing person due to being late for a cricket match or when Todhunter walks outside expecting not to be shot and killed). The other thing that drives me nuts is we never know what was so important that Miss Froy needed to disappear. The villain of the film is also very obvious. The film is way more schmaltzy than Hitchcock’s later films. He is way less cynical here. Without Hitchcock’s strength as a director and the strong draw of the mystery is so strong, it gets you passed all of those shortcomings.
