Saboteur (1942)

Not bad, but let's play make believe: James Stewart, Margaret Sullavan and Claude Raines

Saboteur might be less than prime Hitchcock, but it has its moments; in fact, quite a few of them, in my opinion. Where it falls apart, however, is in an essential part of any movie...the leads, including the villain. Hitchcock usually was able to come up with interesting villains. Just think of James Mason, Robert Walker, Joseph Cotton, the never seen Rebecca, Paul Lukas, Ray Milland, Herbert Marshall or Claude Raines. In his best films, if he didn't have a charismatic villain he had such charismatic leads - Grant, Olivier, Donat, Bergman, Stewart, for example, that it didn't make much difference

With Saboteur, we have as the male lead Robert Cummings, a pleasant actor, a fine light comedian but, in drama, just earnest, bland and conscientious. His partner here is Priscilla Lane, long forgotten but reasonably popular back then. She's a nice young woman, an adequate actor and not very interesting. Neither of them has any spark of self-irony and there's not bit of measurable sexual voltage. As a villain we have the always reliable Otto Kruger, mister smoothie himself. I've always enjoyed watching Kruger. He was predictable but completely professional. Put the three of them together and we have a film where we really don't care what happens to anybody. It's the set-ups and some of the set pieces that had better hold our interest. In other words, we have Saboteur. Try to imagine an alternate universe where Saboteur, with the same script (maybe without the talky and corny bits) and same scenes, now starred James Stewart or Robert Donat, Margaret Sullavan or Madeleine Carroll (Hitchcock evidently wanted Sullavan) and Claude Raines or Godfrey Tearle. Now that might be one of Hitchcock's classics, or at least something on the charming, dangerous level as Foreign Correspondent. But back to reality.

Barry Kane (Cummings), just a guy from Glendale, California, gets involved in a horrendous fire at the aircraft factory where he works, a fire caused by a traitor and where his best friend is killed. It looks to the police that Barry is responsible. He takes off to save himself and find out what really is going on. All he has to go on is the address on a letter he saw at work when he handed it back to a man he thought was another plant worker, a man named Frank Fry (Norman Lloyd). In short order Barry is on the road to Springville, California, and the home of the rich and gracious Charles Tobin (Otto Kruger), then, after a perilous escape while wearing handcuffs, to a house in the woods. There he meets Pat Martin (Lane), who doesn't believe his story, and her blind uncle, who does. Then it's off to desolate Soda City (with Pat; she changed her mind), then to New York City and to a grand ball filled with traitors mixed in with the rich and patriotic. Finally we arrive at the high point of the movie... a tense ship launching, a shootout in a crowded movie house (with Veda Ann Borg on the screen) and a dangerous, high tension scramble up the Statue of Liberty, a tearing coat and a backward, face up, fall.

Even with the weaknesses of the leads, Hitchcock gives us some entertaining moments...a leap off a high bridge and a struggle in a river torrent, a nighttime meeting with circus folks of all shapes, sizes, weights and degrees of hairiness, the desolate ghost town that's Soda City, Alma Kruger and her white tie society ball and, of course, the Statue of Liberty. Stewart, Sullavan and Raines would have been terrific. So would be watching again The 39 Steps.

The DVD has a fine transfer. June 30, 2008

Hitchcock and World War II

As a harbinger to "North By Northwest", Alfred Hitchcock devised a brilliant, crisp ending to "Saboteur" by setting up a confrontation between good and evil atop the Statue of Liberty. True to form, the director excels at these last-minute flights downward and "Saboteur" is no exception. It's a Hitchcock classic.

Nicely cast with an impressive young Robert Cummings as the lead, "Saboteur" is a terrific look into America in the early days of the Second World War. Wrongly accused of arson and murder, Barry Kane, (Cummings) begins a flight from "the authorities" which takes him (and an unsuspecting love interest) from California to New York. One of the side comic benefits of this film is the dated, cheesy language, which gives it an extra attraction. But Hitchcock had his own comic moments in mind that work just fine. Encountering a circus troupe at night during one of the legs of his flights, Cummings is introduced to a cadre of performers, the funniest of which is the bearded lady with her beard done up in curlers for the night! Were it not for the midget and the platitudes that the film keeps offering, I would have said that "Saboteur" had its roots in "The Wizard of Oz", produced three years earlier.

As a suspense, "Saboteur" is not up there with later Hitchcock films, but it does give Cummings a stage for some fine acting, not to mention the often overlooked wonderful character actor Norman Lloyd, whose small but important role is central to the film. I highly recommend "Saboteur" for its fine cast and terse direction. November 30, 2007

ALFRED HITCHCOCK AT IT'S BEST

alfred hitchcock may be considered the king of directors but surely his name will sparkle for years to come.hitchcock's direction has given us the most original camera angles to date with his pull back to close ups a style that can never be repeated.one of his great works is saboteur released in 1942 starring priscilla lane,robert cummings,norman lloyd(mr. lloyd also in later years worked as producer and director for alfred hitchcock's presents tv shows in the 1950's),otto kruger.an intense spy thriller that takes a chase from los angeles to new york city.a superb work of thrills.this universal print is a crystal clean print and in glorious black and white.the sound is excellent as well.this is one of hitchcocks greatest adventure films and one of the best in the 1940's well worth adding to hitchcocks films.any collection of adventure or hithcock films would be incomplete without saboteur...... September 28, 2007

Even lesser Hitchcock towers above most of everything else

I enjoyed this film a great deal. However, it depends what you are comparing it against. Hitchcock scholars regard it is as a lesser work of the master. They find its wide ranging geography make the films and plot somewhat disjointed. They see direct borrowings from "The 39 Steps", "The Man Who Knew Too Much", "Sabotage", "The Ring and Murder!" and have a variety of other criticisms from writing to casting. Hitchcock himself said that he felt the film was too cluttered. But all this is comparing it against masterpieces. When you compare this film against the schlock we pay $10 to see nowadays it is terrific.

The film is set at the beginning of World War II and was in fact released in 1942. The basic idea is that Barry Kane (Robert Cummings) is mistakenly taken as a saboteur and is on the run. In his wanderings he meets Pat Martin (Priscilla Lane). She is a successful model, who believes Kane is guilty, but is stuck traveling with him and continues to wrestle over helping Kane or turning him in. The movie ranges from coast to coast with dramatic settings and some pretty dramatic scenes.

Some critics fault the film's lack of humor, but the movie is about the war, the danger of home grown saboteurs, and even shows actual footage the USS Lafayette on its side in New York. (It was the Normandie that had caught on fire and tipped after taking on huge amounts of water from fighting the fire. Some say it was indeed sabotage by the mafia.). The last scene on the Statue of Liberty is a classic. Having climbed the statue as a child, I can assure you that the speed with which they get up and down that huge structure is dramatic license!

I think the leads are quite good and especially enjoy the scene with the kindly Phillip Martin (Vaughan Glaser), who gives the films cautionary advice to an audience alarmed by the war and frightened of enemies on the homefront.

Enjoy!

Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI September 21, 2007

Saboteur

Scripted by the inimitable Dorothy Parker, Hitchcock's nerve-rattling wartime thriller takes a favorite theme--the wrongly accused man-- and gives it a strong, seditious twist. Terrific acting and a breakneck pace make this one of Hitch's most suspenseful movies, right up there with "North by Northwest" or "The 39 Steps." The cast is great, and the locations are used to brilliant effect. Kane's climactic scramble up the Statue of Liberty, a scene as tense and dramatic on repeated viewings as it is the first time around, is "Saboteur" 's unforgettable piece de resistance. June 25, 2007

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