IMDb > Saboteur (1942)
Saboteur
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Saboteur (1942) -- Aircraft factory worker Barry Kane goes on the run across the United States when he is wrongly accused of starting a fire that killed his best friend.
Saboteur (1942) -- Aircraft factory worker Barry Kane goes on the run across the United States when he is wrongly accused of starting a fire that killed his best friend.

Overview

User Rating:
7.4/10   6,720 votes
MOVIEmeter: ?
Up 8% in popularity this week. See why on IMDbPro.
Director:
Alfred Hitchcock
Writers:
Peter Viertel (original screenplay) &
Joan Harrison (original screenplay) ...
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Contact:
View company contact information for Saboteur on IMDbPro.
Release Date:
24 April 1942 (USA) more
Genre:
Mystery | Thriller | War more
Tagline:
3000 miles of terror! more
Plot:
Aircraft factory worker Barry Kane goes on the run across the United States when he is wrongly accused of starting a fire that killed his best friend. full summary | add synopsis
Plot Keywords:
more
Awards:
1 nomination more
NewsDesk:
(3 articles)
Geek Deal: Alfred Hitchcock Masterpiece DVD Collection for $54
 (From Slash Film. 28 October 2009, 9:32 AM, PDT)

15 Bloody Box Sets
 (From Fangoria. 19 January 2009, 8:00 AM, PST)

User Comments:
On the Road more (91 total)
US TV Schedule:
Sat. Nov. 148:00 PMTCM   

Cast

  (Cast overview, first billed only)
Priscilla Lane ... Patricia 'Pat' Martin

Robert Cummings ... Barry Kane

Otto Kruger ... Charles Tobin
Alan Baxter ... Freeman
Clem Bevans ... Neilson
Norman Lloyd ... Frank Fry
Alma Kruger ... Mrs. Sutton
Vaughan Glaser ... Phillip Martin (as Vaughan Glazer)
Dorothy Peterson ... Mrs. Mason
Ian Wolfe ... Robert
Frances Carson ... Society Woman
Murray Alper ... Truck Driver
Kathryn Adams ... Young Mother
Pedro de Cordoba ... Bones - Circus Troupe
Billy Curtis ... Midget - Circus Troupe
more
Create a character page for: ?

Additional Details

Runtime:
108 min
Country:
USA
Language:
English
Aspect Ratio:
1.37 : 1 more
Sound Mix:
Mono (Western Electric Mirrophonic Recording)

Fun Stuff

Trivia:
Director Cameo: [Alfred Hitchcock]A man visiting the newsstand in front of the drug store where Barry Kane is taken upon arriving in New York City. more
Goofs:
Errors in geography: Fry orders the taxi to go downtown from midtown Manhattan, but on the way they pass by the sunken ship on their right which is supposed to be in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Brooklyn is to the east of Manhattan so it's impossible to see the ship on their right. more
Quotes:
Mr. Freeman: The most important thing is to make sure of everyone around us.
Charles Tobin: Mr. Kane?
Mr. Freeman: I'm just not sure. I want to know that he's all right.
Charles Tobin: All right? What an understatement. He's much more than that! He's noble and fine and pure... So he pays the penalty that the noble must pay in this world: he's misjudged by everyone.
more
Movie Connections:
Referenced in "The Simpsons: Three Men and a Comic Book (#2.21)" (1991) more
Soundtrack:
Tonight We Love more

FAQ

Is "Saboteur" a remake of "Sabotage"?
more
23 out of 26 people found the following comment useful.
On the Road, 19 November 2001
9/10
Author: telegonus from brighton, ma

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.

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Hitchcock's most underrated film? deb_michaels
Los Angeles pronounced Los An-guh-lis? cadsuanesedaiuk
Why did Hitchcock name the man Kane? yvdlhq
Big lapse in parental responsibility towards the beginning paustecri
So did Bob Cummings save the battleship or not? tdefores
Won't anyone stand up for this movie? mangoloid
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