Lifeboat (Special Edition)

Lifeboat (Special Edition)
by Alfred Hitchcock

Lifeboat (Special Edition)
List Price: $14.98
Our Price: $9.99
You Save: $4.99 (33%)
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Buy Used: from $3.48 (click here)
Category: DVD
See more DVD releases


(Click here)
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada

DVD Cover Information

Actor: John Hodiak, Mary Anderson, Tallulah Bankhead, Walter Slezak, William Bendix
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Brand: Twentieth Century Fox
Cinematographer: Glen MacWilliams
Editor: Dorothy Spencer
Producer: Kenneth Macgowan
Writer: Ben Hecht
Writer: Jo Swerling
Writer: John Steinbeck
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 1.0; German (Original Language); English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC, Special Edition
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 96 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-10-18
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: 20th Century Fox

Movie Reviews of Lifeboat (Special Edition)

Movie Review: Bankhead+Hitchcock- YAY!
Summary: 5 Stars

Brilliant film, the effects are EXCELLENT for the 1940s! I had a soft spot for all of the characters, even spoiled, mildly slutty Constance, who kisses one guy and then throws herself into another guy's lap. The nurse was really a sweet lady and I like the pacifist nature of the black character.

Tallulah gets typecast in all the films she did- Faithless, Royal Scandal, Lifeboat and the others. Because she drinks, smokes, tells somewhat to shut up and slaps somebody in all of them. Its so funny.

I bought my copy yesterday. GET IT PEOPLE. GET IT!

Summary of Lifeboat (Special Edition)

Nominated for three Academy Awards, Alfred Hitchcock's "absorbing brilliantly executed" (Hollywood Reporter) World War II drama, is a remarkable story of human survival.

After their ship is sunk in the Atlantic by Germans, eight people are stranded in a lifeboat, among them a glamorous journalist (Tallulah Bankhead), a tough seaman (John Hodiak), a nurse (Mary Anderson) and an injured sailor (William Bendix). Their problems are further compounded when they pick up a ninth passenger - the Nazi captain from the U-boat that torpedoed them. With its powerful interplay of suspense and emotion, this legendary classic is a microcosm of humanity, revealing the subtleties of man's strengths and frailties under extraordinary duress.


Part mystery, part wartime polemic, Lifeboat finds director Alfred Hitchcock tackling a cinematic challenge that foreshadows the self-imposed handicaps of Rope and Rear Window. As with those subsequent features, Hitchcock confines his action and characters to a single set, in this instance the lone surviving lifeboat from an Allied freighter sunk by a German U-boat in the North Atlantic. A less confident, ingenious filmmaker might have opened up John Steinbeck's dialogue-driven character study beyond the battered boat and its cargo of survivors, but Hitchcock instead revels in his predicament to exploit the enforced intimacy between his characters.

Indeed, we never actually see the doomed freighter--the smoking ship's funnel beneath the credits simply sinks beneath the waves, and we're plunged into the escalating tensions between those who gradually find their way to the boat, a band of eight English and American passengers and crew, plus a German sailor (Walter Slezak) rescued from the U-boat, itself destroyed by the freighter's deck gun. Heading the cast and inevitably commanding their and our attention is the cello-voiced Tallulah Bankhead as Connie Porter, a cynical, sophisticated writer whose priorities seem to be hanging onto her mink and keeping her lipstick fresh. Gradually, the others find Porter and her lifeboat, forming a temporary community that inevitably suggests a careful cross section of archetypes, from wealthy industrialist (Henry Hull) to ship's boiler men (John Hodiak and William Bendix).

Hitchcock juggles the interpersonal skirmishes between the boat's occupants with the mystery of their German prisoner, which itself becomes a meditation on the fine line between nationalism and morality, a line that Slezak walks delicately until his identity is resolved. Visually, Hitchcock transforms his back-lot set and its rear-projected cloudbanks into a desolate stretch of ocean, while capturing the horror of an amputation through an economical set of images culminating in an empty boot. --Sam Sutherland

Action & Adventure DVD Video

DVD Video
Movies most talked about in My all-time favorite movies, Part 4
Au Hasard Balthazar (Criterion Collection) ImageAu Hasard Balthazar (Criterion Collection)
Image Entertainment; Release date: 2005-06-14; DVD
Best price: $19.04
Price in other shops: $29.95
Ugetsu - Criterion Collection ImageUgetsu - Criterion Collection
Image Entertainment; Release date: 2005-11-08; DVD
Best price: $19.42
Price in other shops: $39.95
Onibaba - Criterion Collection ImageOnibaba - Criterion Collection
Image Entertainment; Release date: 2004-03-16; DVD
Best price: $20.31
Price in other shops: $29.95
Throne of Blood - Criterion Collection ImageThrone of Blood - Criterion Collection
Image Entertainment; Release date: 2003-05-27; DVD
Best price: $25.99
Price in other shops: $39.95
Burnt by the Sun ImageBurnt by the Sun
Release date: 2003-07-15; DVD
Best price: $149.99
Joyeux Noel (Widescreen) ImageJoyeux Noel (Widescreen)
Sony; Release date: 2006-11-14; DVD
Best price: $5.84
Price in other shops: $14.94
Eight Men Out ImageEight Men Out
Team Marketing; Release date: 2001-05-08; DVD
Best price: $2.90
Price in other shops: $14.98
The Silence of the Lambs (Two-Disc Collector's Edition) ImageThe Silence of the Lambs (Two-Disc Collector's Edition)
TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX HOME ENT; Release date: 2007-01-30; DVD
Best price: $10.24
Price in other shops: $19.98
JFK - Director's Cut (Two-Disc Special Edition) ImageJFK - Director's Cut (Two-Disc Special Edition)
Warner Brothers; Release date: 2003-11-11; DVD
Best price: $8.06
Price in other shops: $26.98
How Green Was My Valley ImageHow Green Was My Valley
Release date: 2003-01-14; DVD
Best price: $6.63
Price in other shops: $14.98
Similar DVD Movies
Suspicion ImageSuspicion
Warner Brothers; Release date: 2004-09-07; DVD
Best price: $9.70
Price in other shops: $19.98
Shadow of a Doubt ImageShadow of a Doubt
Universal; Release date: 2006-02-07; DVD
Best price: $10.79
Price in other shops: $19.98
Dial M for Murder ImageDial M for Murder
WARNER HOME VIDEO; Release date: 2004-09-07; DVD
Best price: $6.04
Price in other shops: $19.98
Rope ImageRope
Universal; Release date: 2006-06-20; DVD
Best price: $8.99
Price in other shops: $19.98
Notorious ImageNotorious
Release date: 2008-10-14; DVD
Best price: $12.01
Price in other shops: $19.98
Strangers on a Train ImageStrangers on a Train
Warner Brothers; Release date: 1997-06-11; DVD
Best price: $7.19
Price in other shops: $14.98
Rebecca ImageRebecca
Release date: 2008-10-14; DVD
Best price: $11.65
Price in other shops: $19.98
The Alfred Hitchcock Signature Collection (Strangers on a Train Two-Disc Edition / North by Northwest / Dial M for Murder / Foreign Correspondent / Suspicion / The Wrong Man / Stage Fright / I Confess / Mr. and Mrs. Smith) ImageThe Alfred Hitchcock Signature Collection (Strangers on a Train Two-Disc Edition / North by Northwest / Dial M for Murder / Foreign Correspondent / Suspicion / The Wrong Man / Stage Fright / I Confess / Mr. and Mrs. Smith)
Warner Brothers; Release date: 2004-09-07; DVD
Best price: $53.00
Price in other shops: $99.98
Alfred Hitchcock - The Masterpiece Collection (Psycho / Vertigo / Rear Window / The Birds / Shadow of a Doubt / Family Plot / Frenzy / The Man Who Knew Too Much / Marnie / Rope / Saboteur / Topaz / Torn Curtain / The Trouble with Harry) ImageAlfred Hitchcock - The Masterpiece Collection (Psycho / Vertigo / Rear Window / The Birds / Shadow of a Doubt / Family Plot / Frenzy / The Man Who Knew Too Much / Marnie / Rope / Saboteur / Topaz / Torn Curtain / The Trouble with Harry)
Universal; Release date: 2005-10-04; DVD
Best price: $83.99
Price in other shops: $119.98
To Catch a Thief (Special Collector's Edition) ImageTo Catch a Thief (Special Collector's Edition)
Paramount; Release date: 2007-05-08; DVD
Best price: $7.93
Price in other shops: $14.98
Compare prices and read customer reviews for more than one million DVD titles.
Oscar 2005 Winners