Saboteur

PG

Now Playing

1 hr. 48 min.

Mystery & Thriller

List

81%

31 Reviews

Tomatometer

71%

5,000+ Ratings

Audience Score

Factory worker Barry Kane (Robert Cummings) is wrongfully accused of setting a deadly fire at an airplane plant in an apparent act of sabotage. Kane believes that the fire was set by another worker (Norman Lloyd), and he travels across the country to find the mysterious saboteur. Along the way he is forced to take Patricia Martin (Priscilla Lane) hostage, but as he begins to earn her trust, she turns from an unwilling captive to a willing accomplice in his quest to help clear his name.

Read More

Read Less

Now in Theaters

Now Playing

Buy Tickets

In Theaters

Fandango at Home

Prime Video

Apple TV

Rent Saboteur on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV, or buy it on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV.

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 out of 5 stars

10/27/22

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 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 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 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 out of 5 stars

12/25/23

Full Review

r b

It held my interest, and was a decent production for the time, but I found the whole sequence of events to be a bit disjointed. Behaviors and circumstances did not always make total sense. Definitely not Hitchcock's best offering.

Rated 3 out of 5 stars

03/31/23

Full Review

Read all reviews

Post a rating

Alfred Hitchcock

Director

Bob Cummings

Barry Kane

Priscilla Lane

Patricia Martin

Norman Lloyd

Frank Fry

Otto Kruger

Charles Tobin

Alan Baxter

Mr. Freeman

Show Less Cast & Crew

Show More Cast & Crew

81%

73%

Marnie

63%

52%

Torn Curtain

69%

36%

Topaz

93%

62%

Family Plot

53%

49%

Rollercoaster

Discover more movies and TV shows.

View More

View more photos

Ian Coster

London Evening Standard

Finally, there's the great scene at the Statue of Liberty - one of Hitch's best inventions in a film which contains all he knows about the art of movie melodrama.

May 26, 2021

Full Review

Bosley Crowther

New York Times

To put it mildly, Mr. Hitchcock and his writers have really let themselves go. Melodramatic action is their forte, but they scoff at speed limits this trip.

May 5, 2020

Full Review

Age Staff

The Age (Australia)

[Saboteur] will keep audiences sitting upright.

May 5, 2020

Full Review

Yasser Medina

Cinefilia

A dull spy thriller in which, at times, Hitchcock sabotages his own formula of the wrong man. [Full review in Spanish]

Rated: 5/10

Oct 26, 2022

Full Review

Walter Chaw

Film Freak Central

It's a real pity how Saboteur veers from its perversion into the drabbest of the quotidian drab, so weightless its contrivances mortally scuttle the whole enterprise.

Rated: 1/4

May 31, 2022

Full Review

Elena de la Torre

Cine-Mundial

Norman Lloyd has triumphed in his feature film debut. [Full Review in Spanish]

May 5, 2020

Full Review

Read all reviews

Synopsis

Factory worker Barry Kane (Robert Cummings) is wrongfully accused of setting a deadly fire at an airplane plant in an apparent act of sabotage. Kane believes that the fire was set by another worker (Norman Lloyd), and he travels across the country to find the mysterious saboteur. Along the way he is forced to take Patricia Martin (Priscilla Lane) hostage, but as he begins to earn her trust, she turns from an unwilling captive to a willing accomplice in his quest to help clear his name.

Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Screenwriter: Alfred Hitchcock, Peter Viertel, Joan Harrison, Dorothy Parker
Distributor: MCA/Universal Pictures [us], Universal Pictures
Production Co: Universal Pictures, Frank Lloyd Productions
Rating: PG
Genre: Mystery & Thriller
Original Language: English
Release Date (Theaters): Apr 22, 1942, Original
Release Date (Streaming): Feb 12, 2014
Sound Mix: Mono
Aspect Ratio: 35mm

Most Popular at Home Now