Idilio en París

Ever since Miss Froy disappeared from a central European train in Hitchcock's "The Lady Vanishes" the "Suddenly there - next moment not" film genre has made for sure-fire entertainment. Of all its many offshoots the one I often return to with great pleasure is the little known "So Long At The Fair" which stars a radiant Jean Simmons as a young English woman visiting the Great Paris Exhibition of 1889 with her brother (David Tomlinson) who disappears from his hotel bedroom after the first night of their stay. What is even more intriguing is that the room itself appears to have vanished. The rest of the film is almost entirely taken up with the girl's desperate search for her brother in a beautiful city that has suddenly become alien through her frightful circumstance and the lack of understanding and sympathy of most around her. Fortunately during the latter stages there is a Prince Charming to aid her quest in the form of Dirk Bogarde at his most gallant. If his reassuring presence takes away something of the film's tension, the scenes up to this point are almost unbearable as we share Jean Simmons's frustrations and watch her one lifeline to the truth she is telling come literally tumbling from the skies. Even knowledge of a most convincing denouement does not dissipate the film's many pleasures on subsequent viewings. These include Benjamin Frankel's delightfully catchy "Carriage and Pair" that actually made the "Top Ten" in its day, the beauty of Jean Simmons lovingly celebrated in a glorious closeup at the very beginning and that strange rarity for a British work of that period, a film in which the French characters actually converse with each other in their native tongue rather than resorting to "'Allo, 'Allo" speak, and this without a single subtitle. Expressions make everything abundantly clear.

Having seen this movie again after many years, I was surprised how well it holds up.

Jean Simmons gave a convincing performance as the young girl, terrified and confused by the disappearance overnight of her brother and the refusal of the hotel staff to acknowledge that he even existed. Dirk Bogarde gives his usual excellent performance as the English artist who comes to her rescue.

Although the plot is fairly predictable, the suspense is maintained right to the end, the setting of Paris during the Great Exhibition is picturesque and both Miss Simmons and Mr Bogarde look delightful What more can you ask for?

A brother and sister check into a Paris hotel days before the 1889 World's Fair kicks off. But the brother disappears overnight and nobody even remembers seeing him.

Perhaps an appropriate tagline would be: A solid, rewarding mystery with an exceedingly clever solution to a classic riddle. The gaslight theme isn't new at this point, and neither is the, "I know I see/saw this person but everyone else sees nothing" premise. However, the key to this intriguing mystery is that there is no mental illness and, believe it or not, no criminal activity. How, then, does someone disappear and why is everyone lying about it?

This movie helped launch the careers of both Simmons and Bogarde and I think they're both great in just about everything (if you haven't yet, check out Bogarde in a fantastic and similarly intriguing film, Libel, with Olivia de Havilland). There's very little chance you'll guess the reason and motive behind it all, but it makes perfect sense when it's finally revealed.

"So Long at the Fair" manages to fuse the macabre with the swank in a singularly enjoyable nerve wracker set in 1889 Paris.

Director Terence Fisher leads his audience with aplomb from the gaiety of the Moulon Rouge to the lugubrious shadows of a convent hospital with an assurance missing from most modern thrillers.

Production values are first rate from the elegant hotel to the elaborately wrought fair sequences.

One could scarcely ask for a more debonair and attractive couple than Mr. Bogarde, (with his famous pompadour intact), and the exquisite Miss Simmons, who, in her turn provides a welcome reminder of 19th century feminine deportment. And Villainess Cathleen Nesbitt, with her cut glass diction, and rustling black bombazine, defines sinister suavity in a way you won't soon forget.

Kudos also to Honor Blackman who wears a bustle with distinction.

There can be a small study made of movies set in Worlds Fairs. Start with THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY, where a few scenes appear at Joseph Paxton's Crystal Palace. Then CENTENNIAL SUMMER, where the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition is the center piece. Go on to The STARS AND STRIPES FOREVER, where Clifton Webb (as John Philip Sousa) performs at the 1896 Cotton Exposition in Atlanta. Then go to this film, followed by MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS (the St. Louis Worlds Fair in 1904). There would be others.

SO LONG AT THE FAIR is about the Paris Worlds Fair of 1900. It is based on an incident that has grown into a modern urban legend concerning how a young woman was told that she had no mother (or,in the film, a brother), there was no room in a hotel that she left this party in, and that she has been imagining events and people for the last couple of days (at least). In the original legend, the young woman is so hopelessly lost by this she loses her mind and is put into an asylum. In the movie (and its novel and other versions) eventually the massive conspiracy to cover-up what happened is revealled.

Did it happen? Did a young woman (here played by Jean Simmons) come into Paris, readying itself for the big world's fair, find herself confronted by a conspiracy that claimed she imagined it all? No historical evidence has ever surfaced that this actually happened. Yet the story survives. It is a terrific story, for it is based on the fragility of reality. If everyone doubted us how could we prove what we said was true? Hard to say. You need some people to validate your story in part or whole for people to believe you. In all the retellings of this story, the heroine is isolated once the mother or brother is gone. The very person to prove the story is the person whose absence is deplored but questioned.

As a costumed historical film, SO LONG AT THE FAIR is very good, with Simmons aided by Dirk Bogarde as the one person in Paris who believes her. And together they prove that Cathlene Nesbitt (the hotel owner) is lying - but with powerful friends to assist her.

It is not the best retelling of the story - Hitchcock used the plot, but changed it, in THE LADY VANISHES, where it is the missing spy, Miss Froy, whose existance is questioned by all who hear the heroine (Margaret Leighton), except Michael Redgrave.

I should add that students of this mystery don't know which world's fair is the site of the story: the 1889 French fair (where the Eiffel Tower first appeared), or the 1900 one. However there was also the 1867 fair in Paris, where Tsar Alexander II of Russia arrived. One version of the story tells that the reason for the cover-up deals with an attempt on the life of the Tsar. So it could have been one of three fairs that was the basis for this marvelous yarn.