Alfred Hitchcock's Rich and Strange (1931) includes a quietly compelling scene set on a Tube train packed with office-weary commuters. The dim and sluggish hero finds himself standing next to an attractive blonde in a beret and white raincoat, whom he manages to ignore completely as he struggles to stay upright while unfurling his newspaper. She doesn't quite return the lack of compliment. His antics amuse her, evidently, but there's a hint of pleasurable speculation in her glance, too, an assessment, perhaps, of what he might yet be encouraged to amount to. And that's it. She departs from the film as abruptly as she entered, taking with her pretty much all that's rich and strange about it.

LRB 21 October 2010 | PDF Download