Saboteur

MOVIE #1,618 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 05.10.24 EVERY OTHER FRIDAY I’M REVIEWING THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ALFRED HITCHCOCK IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER. THIS IS TGI-HITCHOCK! One of the reasons I have switched to doing chronological-only Director Focuses is that it allows me to see an artist’s growth and — most of the time — this means that the films get better as I go along. For example, Saboteur is Hitchcock’s best effort yet, but it’s still best known as a movie that he essentially remade twenty years later (a little picture called North by Northwest). Even in 1942, these themes were already well-tread, though: previous entries like the 1930s’ The Man Who Knew Too Much (which he would also go on to remake) and The 39 Steps are thrillers that follow a similar trajectory of the “wrongfully accused man seeks to uncover some massive conspiracy” plotline.

Clocking in at just north of 100 minutes, this has everything you want in an early American Hitchcock film. From this simple static shot of the inciting incident…


…to a fantastic bridge-jump stunt…


…amazing, living matte art…


…all the way to the final, eerily quiet set-piece on the “Statue of Liberty” — perhaps this looks cheesy to some but I think it’s genius…


This is his best-paced and most economical effort to date, and the most entertaining overall as well. A new leader in the clubhouse. For now.

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CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ MOVIE #1,617 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #1,619 ⫸

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Saboteur is a 1942 American spy thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock with a screenplay written by Peter Viertel, Joan Harrison and Dorothy Parker. The film stars Robert Cummings, Priscilla Lane and Norman Lloyd. It was released on April 22, 1942.