Saboteur (film)

Saboteur
Directed by	Alfred Hitchcock
Produced by	Frank Lloyd Jack H. Skirball (associate producer)
Written by	Peter Viertel Joan Harrison Dorothy Parker
Starring	Robert Cummings Priscilla Lane Otto Kruger Norman Lloyd
Music by	Frank Skinner
Cinematography	Joseph A. Valentine
Editing by	Otto Ludwig Edward Curtiss (uncredited)[citation needed]
Studio	Frank Lloyd Productions, Inc.
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Release date(s)	April 22, 1942 (1942-04-22)
Running time	108 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

Saboteur is a 1942 Universal film directed by Alfred Hitchcock with a screenplay written by Peter Viertel, Joan Harrison, and Dorothy Parker. The film stars Priscilla Lane, Robert Cummings, and Norman Lloyd. It should not be confused with a Hitchcock film of a similar title, Sabotage (also known as The Woman Alone, 1936).

Plot summary

Aircraft factory worker Barry Kane (Cummings) is wrongly accused of starting a fire at a Glendale, California airplane plant during World War II, an act of fifth columnist sabotage that killed his best friend. Kane believes that the real culprit is a man named Fry (Lloyd) whom he had seen at the plant just before the fire. When no one named “Fry” is found on the list of plant workers, Kane becomes a fugitive, running from the authorities to find the real saboteur.

Having seen Fry's name on an envelope, Kane heads to the address, a ranch in the Central Valley. The ranch's owner, Charles Tobin (Otto Kruger), is seemingly a well-respected local citizen but it is later revealed that he is secretly in league with the saboteurs. Turned in by Tobin, Kane manages to escape from the police. He takes refuge with a kind blind man whose visiting niece is a billboard model, Patricia "Pat" Martin (Priscilla Lane). When her uncle asks her to take Kane to the local blacksmith shop so that he can have his handcuffs removed, she instead attempts to take him to the police, believing that it is the right thing to do. Kane catches on, and overpowers and kidnaps Martin, protesting his innocence. He eventually uses the fan-belt pulley of her car's generator to cut off his handcuffs, which causes the car to overheat.

They arrive in the abandoned Soda City and stumble into a mine, a staging area for the saboteurs' plan to blow up Boulder Dam. After Kane is discovered by the saboteurs, he convinces them that the newspaper and radio accounts are true and that he is, in fact, a saboteur in league with them. Finding their plans to destroy the dam foiled, the saboteurs head for New York City with Kane, planning to sabotage the launching of a new U.S. Navy ship USS Alaska at the Brooklyn shipyard. Kane's performance fooled Martin as well, who flees, hoping to get to New York in time to stop them.

The saboteurs meet in the mansion of a New York ally. There Kane finds the captured Martin, who had gone to the police but was betrayed by a corrupt chief privy to the conspiracy. As Kane attempts to signal to her that she should escape, Tobin arrives and recognizes Kane, denouncing him as a foe to the conspiracy. The saboteurs lock Kane in the cellar and Martin in an office at Rockefeller Center. Martin drops a note from her window, which notifies the FBI. The FBI rescues her, while Kane triggers a fire alarm back at the saboteurs’ mansion and frees himself.

Kane arrives at the shipyard to warn the Navy, and finds Fry at the controls inside a fake newsreel truck. Kane struggles with Fry long enough that the ship is safely out of the dock before Fry can activate the detonator. Holding Kane at gunpoint, Fry is driven to Rockefeller Center, only to find the police waiting. Fry's flight from the officers eventually takes him to the top of the Statue of Liberty, with Martin following all the way at Kane's behest. She stalls Fry until the FBI arrive, and Kane, who has been brought along to identify him, dashes away from his police escort to chase Fry.

Kane follows him out to the statue's torch, and Fry, trying to escape, loses his balance and falls off over the torch's banister. Fry manages to grab hold of the statue's hand while Kane begins to climb down to rescue Fry. Kane calls for help from the police who finally have arrived at the torch. Fry's grip slips and Kane quickly grabs the sleeve of Fry's jacket. The stitching on Fry's jacket sleeve tears and eventually gives as Fry tumbles to his death. Kane returns to the top of the torch and embraces the waiting Pat.

Production

Hitchcock was under contract to David O. Selznick, so he first pitched the idea for the film to him; Selznick gave the okay for a script to be written, assigning John Houseman to keep an eye on its progress and direction. Val Lewton, Selznick's story editor, eventually passed on the script, so Selznick forced Hitchcock to offer it to other studios, "causing ill feelings between the producer and his director since it not only showed a lack of belief in Hitchcock's abilities, but also because the terms of Hitchcock's contract would net Selznick a three-hundred percent profit on the sale." Universal signed on, but their budgetary limits meant Hitchcock couldn't afford Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck, the two actors he wanted for the leading roles; Universal did bring in Dorothy Parker to write a few scenes, "mostly the patriotic speeches given by the hero."

Production on the film began less than two weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Hitchcock used extensive location footage in the film, especially in New York City, and utilized special long lenses to shoot from great distances. At one point Norman Lloyd glances at a capsized ship in the harbor and smiles knowingly; the ship is the former SS Normandie renamed the USS Lafayette, which was rumored to have been sabotaged by the Germans. There was clever matching of the location footage with studio shots, particularly in the famed Statue of Liberty sequence, where actor Norman Lloyd appeared to fall to his death. Hitchcock claimed "the Navy raised hell with Universal about these shots because I implied that the Normandie had been sabotaged, which was a reflection on their lack of vigilance in guarding it."

Hitchcock makes his trademark cameo appearance about an hour into the film, standing at a kiosk in front of Cut Rate Drugs in New York as the saboteur's car pulls up.

There was no music to underscore the film's climactic film scene; Hitchcock chose to let the action on the screen propel the scene on its own. The scene also utilized visual effects that were ahead of their time. In particular, Lloyd lay on his side on a black saddle on a black floor while the camera was hauled from closeup to 40-feet above him. Film taken from the top of the Statue was then superimposed onto the black background, making him appear to drop downward, away from the camera (interview with Lloyd on the Universal DVD).

Reception

The film did "very well at the box office even with its B-list cast"; it made a "tidy profit for all involved."

Bosley Crowther of The New York Times called the film a "swift, high-tension film which throws itself forward so rapidly that it permits slight opportunity for looking back. And it hurtles the holes and bumps which plague it with a speed that forcefully tries to cover them up." Crowther noted that "so abundant [are] the breathless events that one might forget, in the hubbub, that there is no logic in this wild-goose chase;" he also questioned the "casual presentation of the FBI as a bunch of bungling dolts, [the film's] general disregard of authorized agents, and [its] slur on the navy yard police", all of which "somewhat vitiates the patriotic implications which they have tried to emphasize in the film."

Time magazine called it "one hour and 45 minutes of almost simon-pure melodrama from the hand of the master"; the film's "artful touches serve another purpose which is only incidental to Saboteur's melodramatic intent. They warn Americans, as Hollywood has so far failed to do, that fifth columnists can be outwardly clean and patriotic citizens, just like themselves."

External links

• Saboteur at the Internet Movie Database
• Saboteur at AllRovi
• Saboteur at TCM Movie Database
• Saboteur posters and other images from eyegate.com