As I discussed at length in a January 2008 blog post concerning Stanley Jaffe’s 1983 thriller Without a Trace, one of the great logical conundrums of the mystery thriller from a screenwriter’s standpoint is how to end a missing persons tale without disappointing the audience. Refuse to provide an answer as to the vanished character’s whereabouts, and an audience feels cheated; offer a solution, and the motion picture loses an element of fascination, especially with repeat viewings. As a result, very few films in this subgenre feel particularly successful. Some, like the way-overhyped Bunny Lake is Missing, practically hand us the solution from the first scene, while others (Jonathan Mostow’s cruelly manipulative Breakdown or Robert Schwentke’s Flightplan, for instance) take a dramatic shift away from the central conceit to hand us something overblown and even ludicrous.

One immediate exception that leaps to mind is an extraordinary British thriller from 1950, directed by Anthony Darnborough and Terence Fisher and entitled So Long at the Fair.

For reasons that I cannot even begin to comprehend, this small masterpiece has evaded commercial video issue in the years since its release, despite an all-too-brief VHS appearance in England, years ago (though a low-grade Spanish DVD transfer is now apparently available in some outlets). The movie has dodged cable airplay for years as well; the last time that I can remember it running consistently (and believe me, I’ve looked) was on the Jonathan Sehring-run Bravo back in the early-mid 1990s. But this month, Turner Classic Movies will air it once again, on Friday, April 17th at 10pm, thanks to the input of one of their guest programmers. And this one, in particular, is worth whatever effort it takes to snag a decent copy.

Jean Simmons (The Blue Lagoon, Elmer Gantry) stars as Vicky Barton, a British girl on holiday in Paris for the 1889 Exhibition/World’s Fair – an event hallmarked by the launch of the Eiffel Tower. She arrives with her brother John (David Tomlinson of Mary Poppins), and the two enjoy a colorful evening on the town, but when Vicky comes to at her hotel the next morning, John has completely vanished. Not only do the odd hoteliers deny his existence, but the room itself has vanished as well. This naturally drives Vicky around the bend with frustration. What exactly is happening here? In time, she teams up with a local artist, George Hathaway (Dirk Bogarde) who promises to help her get to the bottom of it.

To reveal more would be wildly unfair. Yes, the movie provides a solution, and it comes from way out of left field. At the wonderful denouement, you’ll understand exactly what has transpired and why it has transpired, but you’ll never see it coming. But that alone cannot account for the film’s success. Just why does this outing feel so satisfying where others along similar thematic lines fail?

Anthony Thorne authored the script, adapting his 1947 novel, and rumors abound suggesting that a variation on this disappearance did in fact occur in 1889 Paris, though if one researches it, one can find absolutely no historical evidence of such claims. No matter: that works to the film’s advantage. On one hand, Fair’s premise seems pulled directly from the hallowed halls of myth and urban legend, as a sort of version of the old wives’ tales about women being abducted from dressing rooms via a trap door or vanishing on their honeymoons and turning up in a freak show years later. But the fact that the particular solution in the movie seems 100% historically plausible sustains the viewer’s fascination with an aura of intrigue; it seems to point to a factual basis with mildly apocalyptic overtones. The movie works even on repeat viewings because it looks beyond the scope of its little mystery, giving rise to all sorts of eerie questions concerning the social climate and sub-rosa goings-on during the actual period in which it is set. The fact that Fair sits poised, then, midway between mythically-charged thriller and historical veracity goes a long way toward explaining its success. Couple this with first-rate work by the three leads, palpable atmosphere, and the film’s deep-seated respect for the intelligence of its audience, and one has something close to perfection.