Sabotage

MOVIE #1,272 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 12.08.23 EVERY OTHER FRIDAY I’M REVIEWING THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ALFRED HITCHCOCK IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER. THIS IS TGI-HITCHOCK! This movie doesn't quite work because there's no intrigue about whether or not this guy is caught up in criminal business or not. That's by design, as Hitchcock has famously defined suspense as "when the audience knows more than the characters." And it works to great effect when the characters are otherwise flushed out, three-dimensional ideas. Even though it feels like I've watched a 100 of his movies at this point, we're still in the infancy of his career. He's not quite there yet.

But what Sabotage offers — loosely based on a 1907 Joseph Conrad novel called The Secret Agent, which is confusing because that’s the title of his unrelated previous film — is more proof that we are firmly past the true incubation period. This is such a fertile and prolific period in the filmography and while he hasn't honed his style, he's really started to master his craft.

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CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ MOVIE #1,271 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #1,252 ⫸

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Secret Agent is a 1936 British espionage thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, adapted from the play by Campbell Dixon, which in turn is loosely based on two stories in the 1927 collection Ashenden: Or the British Agent by W. Somerset Maugham. The film stars Madeleine Carroll, Peter Lorre, John Gielgud, and Robert Young. It also features uncredited appearances by Michael Redgrave, future star of Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes (1938), Michel Saint-Denis as the Coachman, and Michael Rennie in his film debut. Typical Hitchcockian themes used in Secret Agent include mistaken identity, trains and a "Hitchcock Blonde". It was released on June 15, 1936.