Saboteur (film)
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| Saboteur | |
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 Oiginal Film Poster |
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| Directed by | Alfred Hitchcock |
| Written by | Peter Viertel Joan Harrison Dorothy Parker |
| Starring | Robert Cummings Priscilla Lane Otto Kruger Norman Lloyd |
| Release date(s) | April 22, 1942 |
| Running time | 108 min. |
| Language | English |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Saboteur is a 1942 Universal film directed by Alfred Hitchcock with a screenplay written by Peter Viertel, Joan Harrison, and Dorothy Parker. The movie stars Priscilla Lane, Robert Cummings, and Norman Lloyd.
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[edit] Brief synopsis
Aircraft factory worker Barry Kane (Cummings) is wrongly accused of starting a fire at a Los Angeles airplane plant during World War II, an act of sabotage that killed his best friend. Kane becomes a fugitive when he decides to run from the authorities to find the real saboteur. Kane believes that the real saboteur is a man named Fry (Lloyd), whom he had also seen working at the plant just before the fire, but the images of Kane in the newspapers leads others to believe to contrary, and when authorities check lists of the plant's employees, no one named "Fry" is found on them.
In pursuit of Fry, Kane hitchhikes into the mountains and ends up at a ranch in the Sierra Nevada. The ranch's mysterious owner is apparently a well-respected local citizen but it is later revealed that he is secretly in league with the saboteurs. Turned in by the rancher, Kane is arrested by the police but later manages to escape. He takes refuge with a kind blind man whose visiting niece turns out to be a well-known billboard model. 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 local police, believing that it is the right thing to do. When Kane catches on, he overpowers and kidnaps her, protesting his innocence. He eventually uses the fan-belt of her car's generator to cut off his handcuffs, but the resultant damage eventually causes the car to overheat and break down in the desert.
Late at night, they see a truck of a travelling circus and decide to hitch a ride on its platform. When stopped by the authorities, the kindly circus people deceive the police into believing that the young woman is a snake charmer, while Kane hides in a trunk. After "The Human Skeleton" explains why he believes in Kane's innocence, the young woman begins to fall in love with the wrongfully-accused man. Not sure where to venture next, Kane decides to follow up on a lead which he had overheard while at the ranch, which leads the pair to set out for a destination they know only as "Soda City". When they arrive, they find an apparently-abandoned mining camp which is in reality a staging area for the saboteurs' plan to blow up Boulder Dam. Kane is discovered by the saboteurs, but with quick thinking, he convinces them that the newspaper and radio accounts are true and that he is, in fact, a saboteur in league with them. Their plans to destroy Boulder Dam are foiled, so the group decides to proceed, along with Kane, by car to New York City. Here they plan to sabotage the launching of a new U.S. Navy ship at the Brooklyn shipyard. The bomb will be in the back of a newsreel truck, belonging to their phony newsreel outfit in Rockefeller Center.
The saboteurs' main New York ally is the socially-prominent Mrs. Sutton, who is hosting a society charity ball the night before the planned act. However, an unexpected event occurs when the owner of the ranch is at this ball also and recognizes Kane. Knowing they have been fooled, the group of saboteurs take Kane hostage, as well as his girlfriend, who is kept in the newsreel company's office in Rockefeller Center. Shortly after, the girlfriend manages to drop a note from the room high in the skyscraper, which leads to notification of the FBI. With the FBI's aid, the two hostages manage to escape.
When Kane arrives at the shipyard to warn the Navy just before the planned launching, his story is not believed by the guards at the gates. Knowing he has to do something, Kane sneaks in anyway. He discovers the phony newsreel van, and is shocked to find Fry at the controls inside. In a fit of sudden rage, Kane throws himself onto Fry and they engage in a wrestling match. However, Fry stretches his hand out to the white button and triggers the explosion and destroys the launched ship. Afterwards, Fry escapes to the top of the Statue of Liberty, but Kane's girlfriend follows. She stalls Fry long enough until the police arrive, and Kane chases Fry up to the top of the Statue's hand holding the torch.
Kane and Fry face off in the climactic scene. Kane draws a gun and tries to corner Fry, but instead of stopping, Fry tumbles over the low railing on the torch and clings to the Statue's hand. While the police are still trying to find where Kane went to, Kane must risk his own life by clambering down to save Fry. Kane cannot grasp Fry's hand, so he instead wraps his hand in the wrist of Fry's suitcoat. The police finally arrive and one is sent for some rope. But, before the cop returns with the rope, the threading of the shoulder of Fry's suitcoat begins to tear...
[edit] Trivia
- Alfred Hitchcock cameo: Hitchcock makes a 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.
- The film's references to fascism and govermental abuse of authority are attributed to Dorothy Parker, who was supposed to have a cameo in the film, along with Hitchcock, as the elderly couple who stops to offer help to Lane and Cummings. However, this was changed so that two character actors played the married couple, and Hitchcock did his cameo as above.
- 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 Normandie, which was rumored to have been sabotaged by the Germans.[1] 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 (through very clever editing and process shots).
[edit] The film's climax
The film is perhaps best remembered for one of the most spectacular endings Hitchcock ever filmed, which takes place at the Statue of Liberty.
Two things made this sequence unique:
- There was no music to underscore the sequence; Hitchcock chose to let the action on the screen propel the scene on its own (since then, many films have been made that do not rely on a music score, such as Robert Wise's Executive Suite, James Bridges' The China Syndrome, and even Hitchcock's own The Birds).
- Visual effects that were ahead of their time (the way the villain falls from the Statue of Liberty at the end of the film, for example, has since been copied by such films as Die Hard and Batman).
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Saboteur at the Internet Movie Database
