Product Details

• Actors: Margaret Lockwood, Rex Harrison, Paul Henreid, Basil Radford, Naunton Wayne
• Directors: Carol Reed
• Writers: Frank Launder, Gordon Wellesley, Sidney Gilliat
• Producers: Edward Black
• Format: Black & White, EP, NTSC
• Language: English
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Madacy Records
• VHS Release Date: September 19, 1997
• Run Time: 90 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6303934870
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #7,352 in Video (See Bestsellers in Video)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

The unofficial sequel to The Lady Vanishes (also scripted by Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat) attempts to recapture the thrills of Hitchcock's charming confection of espionage and romance with generally fine results. Margaret Lockwood reprises her role as the flighty heroine, now the daughter of a Czech scientist captured by the Nazis as her father leaves the country. She escapes from a concentration camp with the help of a defiant male prisoner (Paul Henreid) and rejoins her father, only to be kidnapped back by the Germans, and then... Well, you get the idea. Rex Harrison costars as a seaside crooner who turns out to be a resourceful British Secret Service agent, whose stiff upper lip and school wit are handled with smiling aplomb. The headlong plot tosses the characters back and forth across the continent so rapidly the actors have little room to breath life into their roles, and director Carol Reed lacks Hitchcock's deftness and light touch, but Harrison's cocky, effusive charm helps enormously. Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne re-create their roles as blasé British tourists (when Britain declares war they, deep in the heart of Germany, worry about cricket and their golf clubs left behind in Berlin: "I'll never replace those," Radford mourns). Reed would find his stride after the war with such accomplished thrillers as Odd Man Out and The Third Man. In light of those classics, Night Train to Munich is an inconsistent but wholly entertaining lark. --Sean Axmaker

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb WW II espionage thriller, October 15, 2002

By	Robert Moore (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

First, the bad news. I have seen two VHS versions of this superb film circulating, but both are of exceedingly low quality. I could be wrong, but I believe that at the moment there is not a first rate version of this film available in any format. We stand in great need of a fully restored DVD version of this film. The available VHS version looks scratched and poorly focused. It is still enjoyable, but one has the illusion of watching a bad print in the wee hours of the morning.

On one level, this film is a sort of remake of Hitchcock's THE LADY VANISHES. The parallels to the latter are especially strong, and not at all accidental. The screenplays for both THE LADY VANISHES and NIGHT TRAIN TO MUNICH were written by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder. Furthermore, Naunton Wayne and Basil Radford recreated their delightful characters Charters and Caldicott, two British twits who nearly stole the show in THE LADY VANISHES. Although they don't make quite the impact in this film that they did in THE LADY VANISHES, their presence nonetheless adds considerably to the film. The female protagonist is portrayed by Margaret Lockwood, who was also in the Hitchcock film. New to the Carol Reed film are an utterly delightful (as usual) Rex Harrison and Paul Henreid. Like THE LADY VANISHES, much of the film takes place on the European continent on a train, and the male hero in each film has a career that involves to some degree music.

NIGHT TRAIN TO MUNICH is not, however, as good as THE LADY VANISHES. The difference isn't in the cast and the script but in the directors. In a suspense film of this kind, Hitchcock would shame any competitor, and both his touch with suspense and with comedy (elements dominant in both films) exceeds that of the otherwise quite gifted Carol Reed. If the two films did not resemble each other so sharply, one would not feel compelled to compare the two.

Nonetheless, taken on its own terms, NIGHT TRAIN TO MUNICH is a first rate film, and anyone watching it will have a thoroughly good time. While Hitchcock makes THE LADY VANISHES a better film, Rex Harrison brings a degree of charm and elegance that is unique. This film, in fact, affords Harrison with one of the better roles of his career. All in all, it is hard to imagine someone not having a great time watching this movie. This will be ever truer when someone provides a good, fresh, restored copy of the film on DVD.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Terrible video of a great film, February 9, 2003

By A Customer

The framing of the film is completely off. There is a black bar across the top of the screen indicating that when they transferred it to VHS, they didn't have it just right. It's extremely distracting.

The film itself is wonderful. Tense, exciting, interesting... I highly recommend you finding a different release and enjoying it.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars British WW2 Espionage, November 9, 2002

By	Cory D. Slipman (Rockville Centre, N.Y.) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Night Train to Munich is a hopelessly outdated yet watchable British 1940 flick made at the precipice of the commencement of World War 2. Rex Harrison plays a somewhat miscast British agent posing as a German major in an attempt to rescue Margaret Lockwood and her father a Czech industrialist from the clutches of the Nazis. The father played by James Harcourt is the inventor of a revolutionary form of armor plating that the Nazis are desperate to procure. Paul Henreid of Casablanca fame gives a notable performance as a treacherous Gestapo captain scheming to coerce the military secrets from the inventor.

The film possesses that hokey quality of those of that era, however Carol Reed was a talented director and tells the story well with a minimum of wartime propaganda.