IA #6: The Lady Vanishes (1938)

 The Lady Vanishes (1938) on IMDb

Here is the Best Picture of 1938 according to the The New York Times. Alfred Hitchcock directed the story of a woman who befriends an elderly lady during an unplanned stopover on a train trip across Europe. Soon after resuming the journey, the woman can’t find her new friend, and everyone she asks tells her they have no memory of any such old woman.

The Lady Vanishes has several elements in common with other movies in the Internet Archive Top 100. (Spoilers ahead if you’re reading this countdown backwards from 1 to 100.) The characters Charters and Caldicott (played by Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne) were so popular that they returned in Night Train to Munich (#67). The brief shot of an English Channel ferry also appears as an Irish Sea ferry in Oh, Mr. Porter! (#33). And of course there’s another cameo by Hitchcock, who made similar appearances in The 39 Steps (#18), Young and Innocent (#89), and Sabotage (#93).