Next Saturday (October 20th), you can see one of Alfred Hitchcock’s best films from the 1930's, The Lady Vanishes (1938); in fact, I count this one among my top 10 Hitchcock favorites. The director made a dozen films during that decade, including the original The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) and The 39 Steps (1935), but don’t overlook this one. It has all the elements that one has come to expect in a Hitchcock film, and "more overt humor than any of the director’s other suspense films with the possible exception of The Trouble With Harry (1955)", per authors Harris and Lasky. Beginning with typical British wit, laced with nuance, the suspense builds as the story progresses: an old woman (Dame May Whitty) passenger on a train disappears, but only Iris (Margaret Lockwood) seems to have noticed. The other passengers either refuse to acknowledge the fact of the missing woman or can't be convinced of it, particularly since a "substitute" old woman has taken the original’s place. Finally, Gilbert (Michael Redgrave), a musician, agrees to help Iris. The plot includes a climactic shoot-out sequence, and the comedic pairing of Naunton Wayne and Basil Radford, who play two of the other passengers. Paul Lukas and Cecil Parker (among others) also appear. This same premise was most recently adapted for the Jody Foster vehicle Flightplan (2005).

Also airing next Saturday is an above average Western that’s not been shown on the channel for nearly three years – Vera Cruz (1954), which features the only dramatic pairing of Gary Cooper and Burt Lancaster. The two play rival American soldiers of fortune in Mexico that are hired to escort a Countess (Denise Darcel) to the titled port city by an aristocrat (Cesar Romero) and the Emperor Maximilian (George Macready). But neither really trusts the other, especially when they discover the huge cache of gold hidden within her stagecoach. Almost a changing of the guard for the genre (among Coop’s last and Burt’s first), it was one of the first films directed by Robert Aldrich. Besides Sarita Montiel, who plays a beautiful rebel that influences the men’s actions, the recognizable cast includes Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson, and Jack Elam.

On Sunday, the Michael Powell-Emeric Pressburger fantasy romance drama A Matter of Life and Death (1946) aka Stairway to Heaven (1947) can be seen on TCM. Borrowing a concept from the Oscar winning story of an earlier comedy Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941) – also airing Sunday, the British pair wrote, produced and directed a story that is a more complex view of what goes on in the immediate afterlife. David Niven plays a bombing pilot that bails out of his burning aircraft in the fog, causing his envoy to the hereafter to miss him such that he ends up meeting and falling in love with the American woman (Kim Hunter) that had talked to him on his plane’s radio before he’d crashed. As in the earlier film, his existence after the mix-up is quite a dilemma for those who operate things on the other side. The resolution is quite inspired: a trial in Heaven to decide Niven’s fate coincides with his brain surgery on Earth – actor Roger Livesey plays both doctor and defense attorney (for Niven) vs. Raymond Massey’s prosecutor – and I’ve probably revealed too much already. Highly recommended, this is the first time it’s aired on the channel since its TCM premiere in September, 2005!

All three of the above selections are available on DVD, but One Foot in Heaven (1941), which airs Wednesday (10/24), is not and neither is The White Cliffs of Dover (1944), which airs the following Sunday, October 28th. I wrote about the former already, in my "Films about Faith" entry, so I’ll not replicate that text here. The latter features one of my favorite actresses: Irene Dunne. Directed by Clarence Brown, it’s an episodic World War II drama that’s unabashedly patriotic propaganda with a cast that also includes plenty of familiar faces: Alan Marshal, Roddy McDowall, Frank Morgan, Van Johnson, C. Aubrey Smith, Dame May Whitty, Gladys Cooper, Norma Varden, and Peter Lawford are credited, whereas Tom Drake, June Lockhart, Elizabeth Taylor, and Ian Wolfe are among those who are not. If you like producer-director Brown’s wholesome family fare as much as I do, this one’s for you. If you don’t, perhaps you’d rather see my last (not on DVD) pick that’s airing during primetime that evening: one of Frank Capra’s darkest and least optimistic films – The Miracle Woman (1931), featuring Barbara Stanwyck in the title role – about people that exploit the religious beliefs of others for their own financial gain. Appropriately, Burt Lancaster’s Oscar winning turn as Elmer Gantry (1960) precedes it.

Lastly, if you’ve not seen collaborators Powell and Pressburger’s first success (at least as far as Academy voters are concerned), you can see 49th Parallel (1941) on Monday, October 29th. Pressburger’s original story won him his only Oscar and the film competed against Mrs. Miniver (1942) – which airs Saturday, October 27th – for Best Picture. The cast includes several of the more prominent British actors of note at that time and features the only accent performance to challenge Meryl Streep’s (take your pick: Out of Africa (1985) or A Cry in the Dark (1988)) for the screen’s worst: Laurence Olivier as a French-Canadian. It’s a World War II drama that was designed to evoke sympathies in the "as yet unengaged in the conflict" United States, and serves as a pretty good indictment of the Nazis’ rhetoric and simple minded brutality as well. Six survivors of a German U-boat, sunk in Hudson Bay, are led (by Eric Portman) across the vast Canadian countryside (above the 49th parallel). On their murderous trek, the predictably fated invaders encounter a diverse set of people: an immigrant co-op that includes Glynis Johns which is led by Anton Walbrook, who gives a stirring speech, a hunter played by Leslie Howard, and an odd character (and patriot) played by Raymond Massey.