Lady on a Train

Deanna Durbin finally got a chance to get out of her giddy teen-age roles and into a giddy adult role for a nice change of pace! She's made up to look sophisticated as she emotes in a screwball comedy-mystery about a girl who witnesses a murder from her train window and then sets out to find the corpse and the killer with the help of a mystery writer (David Bruce). The cast is studded with oddballs: Edward Everett Horton, Dan Duryea, Elizabeth Patterson, George Coulouris, Jacqueline DeWitt, Ralph Bellamy, William Frawley. All of it is highly unlikely but reality is not what this amusing mystery spoof is about. Deanna Durbin not only manages to bring comic flair and poise to her inquisitive young lady--she does a nifty job on some torchy night-club numbers: Night and Day and Give Me A Little Kiss, as well as Silent Night for a Christmas scene. Enjoyable as long as you're not expecting true-to-life situations! The wacky plot seems like something Agatha Christie might have spun in one of her wilder moments.