Lady on a Train

Lady on a Train (1945) is the Asheville Film Society’s Christmas offering. The lady of the title is Deanna Durbin (with her hair dyed blonde) as detective-fiction fan Nikki Collins (we first see her reading something called The Case of the Headless Bride) , who’s on a train to New York to spend Christmas with her aunt. As luck (and the needs of the plot) would have it, she happens to look out the window — while the train is stopped waiting to go into Grand Central — and sees a man (unbilled Thurston Hall) being murdered with a crowbar in a nearby building. Unfortunately, the murderer’s back is toward her so she doesn’t know whodunit — and not surprisingly, no one believes what she saw. So with the kind of logic known only to the movies, she tracks down Wayne Morgan (David Bruce), the author of The Case of the Headless Bride, to get him to help solve the mystery. Before long, she’s figured out who the victim was and attempts to crack the case on her own. Yes, it’s pretty absurd, but it’s also a marvelously entertaining — and offbeat — movie for Durbin. (Of course, she gets to sing a few songs — “Silent Night,” “Give Me a Little Kiss” and “Night and Day” — in between murders.) The supporting cast is excellent and the usually underused David Bruce (most famous as the title character in The Mad Ghoul) proves himself a very adept light leading man — and unwilling sleuth. Director Charles David made only this and one other movie, but he perhaps didn’t mind much since he married Ms. Durbin.

The Asheville Film Society will screen Lady on a Train Tuesday, Dec. 18 at 8 p.m. in the Cinema Lounge of The Carolina Asheville and will be hosted by Xpress movie critics Ken Hanke and Justin Souther.