Saboteur
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Written by Peter Vertiel, Joan Harrison and Dorothy Parker
1942/USA
Frank Lloyd Productions
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
Charles Tobin: Very pretty speech – youthful, passionate, idealistic. Need I remind you that you are the fugitive from justice, not I. I’m a promient 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?
This is easily Hitchcock’s most political and patriotic movie. It doesn’t particularly help the suspense.
Barry (Robert Cummings) works at a defense plant. One day his friend bumps into the unfriendly Fry who drops a lot of letters and a hundred dollar bill. Barry notes the man’s name so he can return the money. Soon afterward the three men are together again watching a fire that has broken out. Barry and his friend decide to try to fight the fire. Fry hands the friend a fire extinguisher that causes the flames to explode into a huge fire ball, killing the friend. The extinguisher was filled with gasoline. Barry becomes the prime suspect in the sabotage. His case isn’t helped when no employee by the name of Fry is on the payroll of the plant.
Barry flees the police. He heads for the address on the envelopes he saw drop from Fry’s pocket. There he meets affable wealthy rancher Charles Tobin (Otto Kruger). Tobin’s little granddaughter unwittingly reveals another stack of letters that proves Tobin to be a Fifth Columnist. Tobin turns Barry over to the police but he miraculously escapes. Now he is on the run from both Tobin’s gang and the police,
Barry is caught in a downpour and takes shelter in the cabin of a sympathetic blind man. The man’s niece Pat (Priscilla Lane) arrives and spots Barry’s handcuffs. She is a patriot who wants to turn him over to the police. But Barry takes her as a kind of hostage and the rest of the film plays out remarkably like the story of The 39 Steps.
My favorite part of this film is Otto Kruger’s perfomance. He is so deliciously evil! The final set piece on the Statue of Liberty is memorable. Aside from being a highly patriotic affair with much speechmaking, it is also interesting that wealth is clearly associated with Nazism by the writers. Bigger stars or better actors in the leads might have helped this film but the speechifying probably would have dragged it down any way. Not bad but not a standout in Hitchcock’s cannon.
Trailer