Alfred Hitchcock says in his opening that "Into Thin Air" was a much told story and even he had told it in "The Lady Vanishes" but for British cinema fans it is a re-working of a Jean Simmons period mystery "So Long at the Fair" (1950) condensed into 25 minutes. The story concerns a young lady who, along with her mother who is obviously ill, visits Paris for the 1889 Exposition, enroute to London from India. After hurrying out to buy medicine for her mother she returns to find not only her mother gone but everyone else denying she and her mother were ever at the hotel.
Being only 25 minutes there is no Dirk Bogarde (as in the Jean Simmons movie) who pops up to say "oh yes, I met your mother in the foyer". Poor Diana has to muddle through as best she can with only the help of an embassy official. In the Jean Simmons movie one of the big scenes is where she realises that the room she thought she remembered has been papered over and it turns up in "Into Thin Air" in a dramatic scene where Diana rips off the plain wallpaper to reveal the original rose pattern underneath!!
In a cute little aside Alfred Hitchcock says "I thought the little leading lady did rather well, didn't you"!!! She was Pat Hitchcock, his daughter and I thought she did very well. I always thought she was wonderful as the bespectacled sister from "Strangers on a Train", the only one who instantly realised there was something very odd about Guy's flamboyant friend Bruno and who in turn because of her spectacles brings out all of Bruno's insane feelings because she reminded him of his first victim.
Being only 25 minutes there is no Dirk Bogarde (as in the Jean Simmons movie) who pops up to say "oh yes, I met your mother in the foyer". Poor Diana has to muddle through as best she can with only the help of an embassy official. In the Jean Simmons movie one of the big scenes is where she realises that the room she thought she remembered has been papered over and it turns up in "Into Thin Air" in a dramatic scene where Diana rips off the plain wallpaper to reveal the original rose pattern underneath!!
In a cute little aside Alfred Hitchcock says "I thought the little leading lady did rather well, didn't you"!!! She was Pat Hitchcock, his daughter and I thought she did very well. I always thought she was wonderful as the bespectacled sister from "Strangers on a Train", the only one who instantly realised there was something very odd about Guy's flamboyant friend Bruno and who in turn because of her spectacles brings out all of Bruno's insane feelings because she reminded him of his first victim.