Torn between wanting a Blu Ray player and knowing that certain death awaits me when I watch this on it.
my film history class watched The Lady Vanishes today. (I was the only person - besides my teacher, of course - who had already seen it.) I have always loved Michael Redgrave as Gilbert, though no one else in my class seemed to think very much of him. As far as my classmates were concerned, he might as well have been a very tall mop. For them he’s merely one more in a sea of faces paraded before us, his last name perhaps ringing a distance bell… but I think they’ll forget him after this term is over. It’s a shame.
That’s just more Gilbert for us to love. This is the movie that made me love Michael Redgrave. Gilbert is just so….guh. He’s funny, a little bit rude, brave and terribly sexy. And the way he dresses. A three-piece tweed suit with a bowtie? Yes, please! Who cares what your classmates think. If they are anything like mine back when I was in film class, they turned up in sweatpants and uggs and slept through the movie. Unlike mine, (since the internet didn’t exist when I was last in film class…) they will probably crib a review off some poor saps blog for their homework. Fuck em. You got class, baby. And obviously so does your teacher.
# Gilbert # I haurange the youth of today # Michael Redgrave # you tweedy steed you # The lady Vanishes # Alfred Hitchcock
The first post at Oh, my tweedy steed has to be Gilbert, the hero of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1938 film The Lady Vanishes. Gilbert is an anthropologist so the tweed fits with his academic side. He gets himself into a scrape involving a pretty lady (whose love of l’ascots could probably inspire a whole other tumblr) and an international spy ring. So he’s romantic and adventurous, a side of tweed that we don’t see often enough. Furthermore, Gilbert is to my mind the quintessential British hero: helpful, sardonic, brave and incredibly sexy. All things that tweed can be if a fabric can be brave or sardonic. He hides his chivalrous nature under a facade of reverse snobbery and practicality (and what could be more practical than good old tweed?)
