Saboteur
by Alfred Hitchcock
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Alan Baxter, Clem Bevans, Otto Kruger, Priscilla Lane, Robert CummingsDirector: Alfred Hitchcock
Brand: Universal
Cinematographer: Joseph A. Valentine
Writer: Alfred Hitchcock
Producer: Frank Lloyd
Producer: Jack H. Skirball
Writer: Dorothy Parker
Writer: Joan Harrison
Writer: Peter Viertel
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled)
Format: Black & White, Dolby, Full Screen, NTSC, Original recording remastered, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 108 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-06-20
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Universal Studios
Movie Reviews of Saboteur
Movie Review: "Are you frightened? Is that why you're so cruel?"
Summary: 5 Stars
Saboteur, starring Bob Cummings and Priscilla Lane, is Alfred Hitchcock's film about twenty-first century terrorism, even though it came out in 1942.
The evil terrorist mastermind is Charles Tobin, played by Otto Kruger, an actor you sort of remember from other roles in forties movies, as you watch him play verbal games with the traditional Hitchcock innocent victim Barry Kane, played by Bob Cummings.
One of Tobin's agents sets fire to the Los Angeles defense plant where Kane works, killing Kane's best friend. Kane is blamed for the arson but knows who the saboteur really was, and he chases the Nazi spy ring while avoiding the police who think he's a traitor. Kane uncovers more sabotage and terrorism planned by the ring and has only one day to prevent the Nazis from sinking a new ship at its commissioning in the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
In one of Hitchcock's perverse twists, the Nazis succeed in this act of sabotage. One of the Nazis looks out of a car window while escaping and sees the ship on its side. No action movie made today would have the hero struggle to prevent a terrorist attack and even partially fail. Kane stops the saboteurs from blowing up the Hoover Dam, killing thousands and devastating the Western economy, so he succeeds where it counts, but he isn't enough of a hero for a summer blockbuster today.
Tobin, the wealthy Nazi spymaster, looks equally elegant in a swimsuit and robe at his own ranch-style mansion in the Southwest, or in a tuxedo at a party in a New York brownstone where the guests are either admirals and generals paying respects to a rich society matron or Nazi spies working with the elegant grande dame to defeat America.
In this film, the rich are the natural allies of fascism, and Hitchcock doesn't think much of the intellectual capacity of America's military leaders if they can be fooled by the Nazis all around them in a twentieth-century Masque of the Red Death.
But not everyone is so blind. For instance, the blind composer who recognizes Kane's innocence and who helps him avoid the police, and who convinces his niece Pat to help him. Pat discovers Kane is wearing handcuffs, but her uncle heard the sound as soon as Kane walked into his cabin, which despite its remoteness is tastefully decorated and has a piano.
Pat tells her uncle that the police say Kane is a dangerous fugitive. He tells her the police couldn't be heroes if they didn't make Kane out to be dangerous. He asks Pat, "Are you frightened? Is that why you're so cruel?" Finally he tells his niece that sometimes one's duty as a citizen is to disobey the law.
For Hitchcock, a new American but someone who definitely chose the United States over other places he could have lived and worked, fear didn't justify cruelty. And cruelty wasn't American.
The least cruel people in Saboteur are the circus troupe that Kane and Pat ask for help. (They resemble some of the characters in the movie Hitchcock made a couple of years later, Lifeboat, in that they represent social types. It's almost a Marxist approach to storytelling, but Hitchcock was no Marxist. He was too much of a pessimist to believe in revolution. For him it was just movie-making shorthand.)
The Human Skeleton, tall and thin, looking like he could be starving, trusts Kane, and wants to hide him and Pat from the police who are searching the circus's vehicles. The Fat Lady, certainly not starving, isn't really afraid of Kane, but she is afraid of the authorities. The Siamese Twins are divided (another of Hitchcock's jokes). The only one with a title or rank is the Major, a little person who wants to appear grander than he is. The Major wants to give Kane to the police.
The Human Skeleton wants to decide "democratically" and it's up to Esmerelda, the Bearded Lady, to cast the deciding vote. Esmerelda sees that Pat trusts and loves Kane (it doesn't take long in the movies) and, like Pat's uncle, the blind composer, she protects them from the police.
Even though most of the Nazis are captured or killed, it seems the masterspy Tobin escapes to Latin America to sit out the war. ("Havana will be lovely.") And I wonder whether Tobin's fellow conspirator, the dowager, with all her money and friends in the War Department, won't be able to talk her way out of the accusations against her. If she's guilty of treason, all her important friends are guilty of stupidity.
That's why I prefer Hitchcock's style to contemporary action flicks. Hero fights spy; hero tries to save spy dangling from national monument; spy gets killed; hero and girl kiss; THE END.
Hitchcock doesn't show how perfect everything will be now, because as much of a fantasist as he is, he knows we won't buy that.
Summary of Saboteur
This riveting wartime thriller stars Robert Cummings as Barry Kane, a Los Angeles aircraft factory worker who witnesses a Nazi agent firebombing his plant. However, it is Barry who is accused of the fiery sabotage, and to clear his name he sets off on a desperate, action-packed cross-country chase that takes him from Boulder Dam to New York's Radio City Music Hall to the top of the Statue of Liberty. Hitchcock's first film with an all-American cast moves with breakneck speed toward its final heart-pounding confrontation and it remains a suspense classic.Robert Cummings stars as Barry Kane, a patriotic munitions worker who is falsely accused of sabotage, in this wartime thriller from Alfred Hitchcock. Plastered across the front page of every newspaper and hated by the nation, Kane's only hope of clearing his name is to find the real villain. If this sounds a bit like Hitchcock's later North by Northwest, it is. There are interesting echoes throughout, including a heart-stopping sequence on top of a national monument. But the most interesting thing about Saboteur is the frequency with which characters demonstrate their willingness to obstruct the police, going on nothing more than the fact that Kane seems like a stand-up guy. They do, again and again, apparently just because good people can spot other good people. Saboteur was made during the thick of World War II, so there are a few passages of heavy-handed jingoism to get through but they're relatively painless. The script as a whole is a clever one--Algonquin wit Dorothy Parker shares a screenwriting credit, and her trademark zingers make for a terrific mix of humor and suspense. Saboteur is a pleasure whether you're a die-hard Hitchcock fan or just someone who likes a good nail-biter. --Ali Davis
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