The Lady Vanishes definitely was a better movie than this. This felt far more melodramatic and cliche especially in terms of the camera moves of a dolly-in to a close up on a person’s face and a music strike right at the end of the dolly. It’s almost the cliche version of “duh-duh-dummmm” The second half definitely hit you over the head more than the first half.
That being said, you can see Hitchcock’s innovative use of the camera especially in those tracking shots such as starting on a book on a table and then dollying back to reveal the space. He does that shot over and over again in the film, starting up close and then dollying back to reveal the space for the dramatic beat.
The camera starts moving psychologically, as in the timing of when the camera hits the wide shot from the close up relative to the action on screen to mirror the height of the psychological beat. However, that sort of camera work can “hit the nail on the head” too hard. Which is what it did in Rebecca. I thought of Wuthering heights when I saw this and disliked Laurence Olivier in this film as much as that. I thought he was just over the top and overly tonal and moody in his performance.
Honestly, its a gimmicky movie and you can see hitchcock saw that too. He got into a fight with selznick over the subtlety of the plot but made the movie anyways as it was his first American film This experience led him to become the auteur he was later in reducing the content available for the edit to solely what he wanted rather than allowing the studio to use bad takes or extra shots to make the film more blunt.