Over the weekend I watched Hitchcock’s “The Lady Vanishes” plus “Night Train To Munich,” and both these classic movies seemed to lead to Wes Anderson’s “Darjeeling Limited”. Finding similarities was as fun as trying to spot Alfred Hitchcock’s cameos in his own films, as indeed there is near the end of “The Lady Vanishes”.
Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson are certainly Hitchcock fans and classic movie fans. Aside from the universal traveling-by-train theme, I was constantly delighted with a treasure trove of parallel vignettes. The beginning scenes in both “The Lady Vanishes” and “Darjeeling Limited” for example, take place in hotel rooms: Hitchcock’s zany, old world hotel scenes are a picturesque inkling to Anderson’s film-short, The Hotel Chevalier, the introduction to the main story of “Darjeeling Limited”: a man and woman ending up in the same room and the same bed. Of course, Anderson’s version is much more steamy and therefore quite a bit more exciting; although, Hitchcock’s classic mystery and suspense build up to plenty of thrills, once they’re all on the train,
Margaret Lockwood does resemble Natalie Portman, a bit, who plays Jason Schwartzman’s wild girlfriend in “Darjeelling Limited,” but Lockwood is distinctly British. She plays an alluring role in both of the older films. Lockwood was the quintessential, lovely, English brunette with soulful, penetrating eyes; a hidden weakness for romance and a biting wit. In “Night Train to Munich,” her leading man is Rex Harrison, a dashing and cheeky British Spy. I honestly did not realize that Rex Harrison was ever that young or handsome. The only other film in which I’ve ever seen him was “My Fair Lady,” where he is much older and rather curmudgeonly. But he has the same delightful, British cadences, which crackle like a schoolboy whose voice is changing.
I have yet to see Wes Anderson’s “Grand Budapest Hotel,” but I suspect this latest Anderson creation was also partly inspired by these two older films, with their snowy, foreign vistas and featured train motifs. Also, Anderson often presents us with his fondest actors and actresses time and again. As well, in these two older films, some of the same characters pop up, specifically the two British chaps, Charters and Caldicott. In “Night Train to Munich,” these two exceedingly English gents banter back and forth calling each other “old boy” as they travel together with an indifferent eye toward anything except cricket. They only want to get back to London and not be drawn into anything complicated, until… the Nazis start getting pushy.
The essential difference I see in these films lies in their thematic backdrop. Wes Anderson replaces the old World War tropes with his own signature touch, which is to say with his unique, loving portrayal of the story and its characters. Anderson does away with warfare hostilities and deals mainly in personal relationships, usually within a domestic, suburban setting, at least up to “The Darjeeling Limited,” where he begins to cross borders into ever more exotic lands but retains the essential feeling for the fragility in relationships while tenderly, and humorously, exposing the family dynamic.
The Darjeeling Limited
Night Train To Munich, cover illustration
short stories diary 