So Long at the Fair

Nicely-acted film, particularly by a young Jean Simmons demonstrating the capabilities that made her such a well-known figure later in her acting career. What's probably not so well known about this picture is that it appears to be based on a real incident that supposedly occurred at the Paris Exposition in May of 1889. In the "real" incident (it's tough to find documentation of it), it is the girl's mother, not her brother, who goes missing, but the details are much the same as presented in the film. It's been awhile since I last saw this movie, but as I recall the film ending was quite different from the actual conclusion; in the latter situation, the young lady never found her mother and was eventually committed to an insane asylum in England. Or so the story goes. True story, or old, old urban legend? Either way, it lends a little bit of added dimension to this intriguing, fairly obscure movie.

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.

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.

Fascinating film from Britain's Rank/Gainsborough Pictures, slyly written by Hugh Mills and Anthony Thorne, has young woman from Naples traveling with her stuffy brother to Paris in 1889 for the Exposition, only to awaken the next morning in their hotel to find her sibling strangely missing. Plot-line has since been well-trodden, and probably wasn't completely fresh in 1950, however the mechanics of the situation are engrossing due in no small part to the direction and performances. Jean Simmons, in both period dress and costume for the festivities, looks very beautiful and handles the high drama with aplomb (though perhaps giving her Vicky Barton more dialogue might have made the character even sharper). Dirk Bogarde, as a painter who met the missing man quite by chance the night he vanished, is excellent teaming up with Simmons to play detective. Stylish, enjoyable film plays fair with the audience to a large degree; a few far-fetched incidents, including a head-scratching balloon disaster, don't detract from the fun. *** from ****

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.