In this golden age of home viewing, the Criterion Collection still provides some of the best editions of the best movies ever released, usually with a rich selection of extras and often including audio commentaries (a feature they pioneered, and perhaps the greatest gift ever to film students and cinephiles alike). This column features one Criterion release per week, based on where my interests lead me and what’s available from the public library.
I’ve never met a psychopath in real life (and hope to keep that streak intact) but I do enjoy seeing them on the screen. I’m not sure why: it’s probably a combination of experiencing fear within safety (an appeal of horror movies in general) mixed with the fascination of observing someone who appears to be a normal human being but is missing the gear that connects other people to emotions like empathy and remorse. That deficit allows the psychopath a much wider range of potential behavior than is available to us dull old normies, so you literally never know what they are going to do next, and that can make for great drama.
George Sluizer’s The Vanishing (Spoorloos) features one of the scariest psychopaths in fiction—the chemistry professor, family man, and sadistic and meticulous killer Raymond Lemorne (Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu). We know almost from the start of this film what Lemorne is, as we see him preparing and rehearsing his anticipated crimes long before he succeeds in carrying them out. That knowledge co-exists with the inevitable observation that he’s faintly ridiculous, with a silly beard and unflattering clothing plus a precocious daughter who knows how to read him. He also fails multiple times before successfully carrying out his plans, so he’s less a criminal mastermind than a mediocrity with a one-track mind and a persona that lets him get away with it.
It’s just too bad for people, particularly women, who come into Raymond’s orbit, as the beautiful Saskia (Johanna ter Steege in her first film) learns too late. We see her “disappear” from a truck stop early in this film, but don’t learn the details of her fate until almost the end (and we’ve seen many events that occur later in the story’s timeline by then). The Vanishing plays with your sense of time that way (another example: the conclusion is there in the credits, if you’re paying attention), and I was surprised upon this rewatch to find that key plot points were not revealed in the order I remembered from previous viewings.
The third key character in The Vanishing is Saskia’s boyfriend Rex (Gene Bervoets). When we first meet him, he and Saskia are a happy young couple heading off for a cycling holiday, while the entire nation seems to be gripped in Tour de France mania. They’re cute but still learning how to be adults, as is revealed during a car emergency in which Rex shows his entire ass. That episode (with some references to a “Golden Egg” from Tim Krabbé’s source novel for this film) sets in motion everything that is to come.
They pull into a truck stop (as in Psycho, the most ordinary of settings), have some sweet moments together, then Saskia goes in to buy some drinks. When she doesn’t come back Rex panics and seems to age about two decades instantaneously. From that point on he begins the downward spiral that, three years later, drives off a new and perfectly lovely girlfriend (Gwen Eckhaus), who tells him she’s not interested in being part of a threesome (the implication being that Saskia is still more real to him than she is).
Saskia has about eight minutes of screen time total but creates an indelible impression during that limited exposure. I had forgotten how little we see of her until this rewatch, so there’s another way this film plays with your head (publicity materials that featured her image on a “missing” poster also contribute to this effect). Most of the story of The Vanishing is really about the relationship between the two key male characters, each of which is horrifying in their own way, and you might well conclude that they deserve each other.
Here’s one other thing to keep in mind: the everyday horror on display in this film are nothing girls don’t learn about from a young age, so maybe male critics (which is to say most critics) overreacted upon encountering in fictional form something a lot of us have had to consider in real life since we were old enough to cross the street alone.| Sarah Boslaugh
Spine #: 133
Technical details: 106 min.; color; screen ratio 1.66:1; Dutch, French.
Edition reviewed: Blu-ray
Extras: 4K digital restoration; interviews with Sluizer and ter Steege; trailer; booklet with essay by Scott Foundas.
Fun Fact: Stanley Kubrick was a big fan of The Vanishing and considered his own film The Shining “child’s play” by comparison.
Parting Thought: What happened to George Sluizer between 1988 (this film; brilliant) and 1993 (the English-language remake, also directed by him; a bomb)?
