Lifeboat

MOVIE #1,729 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 06.14.24 EVERY OTHER FRIDAY I’M REVIEWING THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ALFRED HITCHCOCK IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER. THIS IS TGI-HITCHOCK! A chamber piece set entirely on the titular lifeboat against the backdrop of WWII, I really loved how different this was from anything else in the filmography thus far. Widely considered a minor entry in his oeuvre, partly due to the fact that it attracted controversy upon its limited release: the film was seen as both too kind towards its German villain, as well as demeaning for its stereotypical portrayal of a lone Black character, performed by Canada Lee. The former complaint is nonsense in retrospect as the film shines in part because that character is far more interesting and layered than you expect to see in films from this era. The stereotype complaint is valid, obviously, but it’s also an incredible job by Lee, who — while certainly acting the subservient role that was par for the course — brings a depth and heart to his performance…

It also features the best and most clever Hitchcock cameo yet…


Filmed in the studio's large-scale water tank, I thought this looked amazing, especially when the expert back-projection footage is spliced in…


In short, this isn’t one to sleep on as we head into one of the richest and most lauded parts of Hitchcock’s filmography.

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CHRONOLOGICALLY
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Lifeboat is a 1944 American survival film directed by Alfred Hitchcock from a story by John Steinbeck. It stars Tallulah Bankhead and William Bendix, alongside Walter Slezak, Mary Anderson, John Hodiak, Henry Hull, Heather Angel, Hume Cronyn and Canada Lee. The film is set entirely on a lifeboat launched from a passenger vessel torpedoed and sunk by a Nazi U-boat. It was released on October 1, 1944.