Release Date: April 22nd, 1942 (Washington D.C. premiere)
Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock
Written by: Peter Viertel, Joan Harrison, Dorothy Parker
Music by: Frank Skinner
Cast: Robert Cummings, Priscilla Lane, Otto Kruger, Norman Lloyd
Frank Lloyd Productions, Paramount Pictures, 109 Minutes
Review:
“Very pretty speech – youthful, passionate, idealistic. Need I remind you that you are the fugitive from justice, not I. I’m a prominent citizen, widely respected. You are an obscure workman wanted for committing an extremely unpopular crime. Now which of us do you think the police will believe?” – Charles Tobin
I love that Starz has a ton of Alfred Hitchcock stuff up, right now. It allows me to delve into some of his lesser known pictures from a time when he wasn’t yet seen as a true auteur.
Saboteur is a spy thriller film-noir that follows an aircraft factory worker that goes on the run after being wrongly accused of sabotage, which also resulted in the death of his best friend.
Barry Kane (played by Robert Cummings) travels from Los Angeles to New York City in an effort to clear his name and expose the real saboteurs who are led by Charles Tobin (played by Otto Kruger), a respectable member of society but really a pro-fascist sympathizer.
Ultimately, this is a thrilling road movie that sees our hero encounter a lot of people that are willing to help him and do him harm. But it is all about the great final sequence, which takes place on the Statue of Liberty and will certainly make you think of the Mt. Rushmore sequence from North by Northwest.
While not my favorite Hitchcock film, it is hard to deny the great craftsmanship that went into this. It is superbly directed, the acting is good and the cinematography by Joseph A. Valentine is very pristine. It doesn’t have the same visual style that would become standard with noir but this also came out at the very early stages of the classic noir era. So it doesn’t use a high chiaroscuro style but it still utilizes contrast well. I absolutely love the shot from the opening credits scene.
In retrospect, and I’m not sure how people saw this in 1942, the film feels like a really good B-movie with a mostly B-movie cast. The budget, due to some of the larger sequences in the film, make it feel grander than something simple and low budget but it just has that sort of B-movie style but with a layer of quality that is very much Hitchcock.
The final sequence is great though and really, the highlight of the picture for me.
Rating: 7.5/10
Pairs well with: Other Hitchcock films of the era: Shadow of a Doubt, Suspicion, Foreign Correspondent and Lifeboat.
Talking Pulp 