Saboteur

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Kathleen T I enjoyed it and liked the undertones of the issues the country was dealing with, but it was a bit too long. The end scene was excellent and all the scenic shots made the movie! Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 10/27/22 Full Review Sam N Saboteur is classic Hitchcock—ordinary man on the run, sinister conspiracies, and a deep distrust of authority. It often feels like a remake of The 39 Steps and clearly influenced North by Northwest. Some scenes are brilliant, others a bit clunky, but it’s an enjoyable, if slightly uneven, thriller. Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 03/21/25 Full Review Alec B Plays like an early draft of "North by Northwest". There are scenes that are little too earnest and sentimental but I think Hitchcock had to let those happen to get away with the more cynical material (i.e. the blatant distrust of any authority) and the weirder gags. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 01/09/24 Full Review harwee h An enjoyable Hitchcock film with one of the most preposterous Hitchcock plots. Robert Cummings is very handsome. Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 01/02/24 Full Review Matthew B It might be said that Alfred Hitchcock had been making his contribution to the fight against Nazi Germany long before the Second World War even began. While Germany is not mentioned in his British films, we can infer that the sinister conspirators and governments of his early films were really intended to be Fascists. (Examples include The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Secret Agent, Sabotage, The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes.) By the 1940s, as America became drawn into the conflict, Hitchcock was able to make blatantly anti-Nazi movies such as Saboteur and Foreign Correspondent. These films worked well entertaining thrillers, but they also contained a good deal of wartime propaganda designed to rouse people to support the values of their own country, and to fight against those who would threaten those values. Saboteur deals with the enemy within. It warns people to be on the lookout for Fascist conspirators living among them. The atmosphere of paranoia is established during the opening credits where we see a sinister silhouette against a corrugated background. The background is that of an airplane factory, which will be the first target of the saboteurs. Later they will be targeting a dam and a shipyard. There is a curious tension in Saboteur. The story is about the need to protect your country from enemies who would undermine it, but the story persistently depicts figures of authority or power as menacing. It is not penniless revolutionaries that Barry Kane is running from, but the police, and those who help to run the country. Worse still, the saboteurs themselves are highly influential and powerful figures in America. The story that holds Saboteur together is a series of picaresque adventures – the visit to Tobin's mansion, Kane's escape from the police, the blind man and the circus folk. Saboteur suffers from the fact that it has a more serious intent than the some of Hitchcock's other films. It is weighted down by its propagandist intentions, and the action occasionally has to stop to allow actors to deliver rousing patriotic speeches. These speeches are by no means bad – I believe that these speeches were written by Dorothy Parker. I would not wish to make it sound like there is not a lot of fun to be had in Saboteur. There is. It contains a wide variety of incident, and it is certainly never dull. There is a certain amount of humour in the film. Hitchcock used various technical devices to make the movie more interesting. As so often in his films, he used back projections and matte paintings, but he ensured that the camera never showed them for more than five seconds before cutting, thereby giving the viewer fewer opportunities to find faults. The film also contains a number of long shots designed to allow audiences to see the American landscape. For the climactic scene of the movie, Hitchcock had a mock-up of the Statue of Liberty built. To create the falling effect, he put Norman Lloyd on a black saddle on a black floor while the camera moved quickly away from him. It may not be in the top league of Hitchcock thrillers, but there is much to enjoy in Saboteur. It offers enough suspense, variety and fun to hold the viewer's interest, and it provides an interesting historical document into the kind of movies that were being made during a time of war. I wrote a longer appreciation of Saboteur on my blog page if you would like to read more: https://themoviescreenscene.wordpress.com/2017/11/04/saboteur-1942/ Rated 4.5/5 Stars •  Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 09/18/23 Full Review Josh G Updated thoughts this movie is tense has a cool road vibe and is subtly very funny. The first few viewing I didn't get it's not like anything in his catalog, It just sorta clicked this time around and it's a wonderful watch. Maybe third views are the charm. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 12/25/23 Full Review Read all reviews

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