Sabotaje

You can't help but marvel at Hitchcock's early work. "Saboteur," for example, is so slick and quick that it's hard to believe he made this film over 60 years ago. There's some propaganda elements but they're woven into the mystery so well that the thing plays beautifully years later. You also get some previews of stuff that Hitchcock would do later--like using a national landmark as a backdrop. This time it's the Statue of Liberty. In "North by Northwest," of course, it's Mt. Rushmore. You'll also recognize things that pop up later in "Rear Window" and "Vertigo" in "Saboteur" but let's not give away the show. Robert Cummings is excellent as is the oh-so-charming Otto Kruger. Look for Hitchcock's mini-western in this one. It happens quickly so don't blink.

This is one of the classic Hitchcock films. It's not really a great film but its classic Hitchcock all the same. It's got the cross- country chase, the interesting characters and situation along the way, the innocent hero and the blonde, the oily villain and his crazed henchman, the big ending, (North by Northeast?).

I think it's a little weak that every nice person- save for the girl, instinctively knows Bob Cummings is innocent the moment they meet him. If you ran into a guy who is accused of torching a defense plant and his best friend with it, who you immediately decide that he's not so bad? Also the horrendous nature of the accusation would make the `It Happened One Night' type scenes that draw the hero and heroine together rather unlikely. The wartime patriotic speech at the end can certainly be forgiven. What movies in 1942 didn't have a speech like that?

The big thing, of course is the ending. Sweet old Norman Lloyd in his younger days finds, as Ben Hecht said, that `he needs a new tailor.' It's a model for many similar scenes later. One wonders why there was no denouement. Lloyd tells Cummings that he will clear him and then dies. Is Cummings on his way to jail at the end? An earlier scene suggests that the police already on his side. Wouldn't it be better to make that unclear and then have a scene afterwards where we find out he's off the hook?

Saboteur doesn't get the attention it deserves for one major reason. Hitchcock wanted Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck. Imagine what a "big" film it would have been perceived as with them as the stars.

Instead, he got Robert Cummings and Priscilla Lane, both very good, but signalling that somehow this wasn't a major motion picture.

Saboteur has all the Hitchcock elements, some reminiscent of the 39 Steps - the wrong man accused and on the run, a blonde, handcuffs, and pre-North by Northwest, a scene at a landmark, with similar action taking place.

The story concerns a worker, Barry Kane (Cummings) accused of setting fire to a munitions factory and killing his best friend. In fact, Kane saw the terrorist - a man named Frye, who posed as an employee. He sets out to clear his name.

There are some interesting scenes and colorful characters, and the end is exciting - also a bit abrupt, as if Hitchcock ran out of money. Still very enjoyable and worth seeing.

This is a thrilling Hitch movie about a high-class rebellious group plotting to blow up major factories , installations , dams and ships . A factory worker ( Robert Cummings ) wrongfully framed of sabotage at a munitions plant set off on pursuit the traitor ( Norman Lloyd still today acting ) who accused him . He is forced to take on the lam and attempts to elude police while tries to find the real culprit . Our hero flees from the web of circumstance evidence threatening to entrap him . At the beginning a gorgeous model ( Priscilla Lane ) suspects Cummings might be the terrorist planting bombs around factories , but later on , being helped by the personable heroine until a groundbreaking climax finale .

Top-notch and top form Hitchcock movie about a WWII worker turned fugitive who tries to unmask the true saboteur . This exciting story is briskly paced and has a brooding , doom-laden atmosphere , including habitual crop of memorable sequences . Hitch uses impressive locations as Boulder Dam , Radio City Music Hall and the Statue of Liberty to intensify the suspense . Some overwhelming set pieces and breathtaking ending on the Statue of Liberty with incredible special effects by the craftsman John P Fulton who has a long career as FX designer . It contains usual Hitch touches constantly boost the action . Interesting screenplay by Joan Harrison -Hitchcock's usual- , Dorothy Parker and Peter Viertel , Deborah Kerr's husband . Atmospheric cinematography in white and black by Joseph Valentine and suspenseful musical score by the classic Frank Skinner . The picture bears certain remembrance to ¨Sabotage(1936)¨ with Silvia Sidney and Oscar Homolka who Hitchcock directed during his first British period . The story deals with ordinary Hitchcock theme as ¨ Wrong guilty¨ such as ¨ Thirty nine steps¨ , ¨Foreign correspondent¨ , ¨Wrong man¨ , ¨North by Northwest¨ and ¨To catch a thief¨ . Rating : Above average for its numerous quirky touches of the Master of suspense and beginning and finishing memorably . Worthwhile watching and indispensable and essential seeing for Hitchcock fans .

Alfred Hitchcock's Saboteur is not one of his best-regarded films; made between two vastly more popular and critically praised pictures, Suspicion and Shadow Of a Doubt, it's generally regarded as a lesser effort. I agree that the later film is groundbreaking, drawing Hitchcock wholly into the American mainstream for the first time, but Saboteur is in its way at least as lively as Suspicion; its chief flaw being its less than charismatic star players, Bob Cummings and Priscilla Lane.

In Saboteur we find Hitchcock feeling his way around America, literally, as its lead character travels from California to New York in search of an arsonist for whose crime he was accused. Cummings is very youthful here, and quite engaging. His boyishness (but not immaturity) perfectly suits the character he is portraying, and seems appropriate, as the director, though middle-aged, was in the process of reinventing himself, and an older, more established star might have thrown things off. Priscilla Lane's spunky heroine, which not a typical type for the director, was very much a common type in American films at the time; and she and Cummings provide an openness and a youth the director needed both in his life and work at this time. I cannot imagine older, more solid types,--Cooper and Stanwyck for instance--doing any better, as they would have, between them, carried, well, too much baggage.

As is the norm in Hitchcock's films, nothing is as it appears. Where Saboteur differs from his better known films is that the audience is let in on the game early. Though Cummings is an accused arsonist, we know that he is innocent. The villains become apparent fairly soon; and the movie hinges more on its plot than its ironies. What pleasures there are are incidental, and here the Master does not disappoint. There is an interesting, Tod Browningish interlude with some circus freaks, who help Cummings elude capture. In another scene, reminiscent of James Whale's Bride of Frankenstein, Cummings spends some time in the cottage of a blind man, who, as it turns out, is Lane's uncle. Was the director perhaps studying key American films of the previous decade? Whatever the case, these and other offbeat and discursive aspects of the movie give it a playfulness and variety, which, when one adds the factor of quite youthful leads, makes the picture seem like the work of a younger man, still learning his craft.

The film's later scenes, in New York, are more suspenseful and typical of the director, as the picture gradually becomes more Hitchockian as it moves along. In the end I find it a satisfying work; and as neither Cummings nor Lane has a dark side as an actor, neither does the movie have one. It is deliberately lightweight, and I suspect semi-experimental; an attempt by Hitchcock to see if he could pull off, in an American setting, the sort of story he had done so well in England. He succeeded admirably. The next logical step: Shadow Of a Doubt, a film in which the main character travels east to west, and with a wholly different set of values and plans.