Saboteur (1942)

An aircraft factory worker goes on the run after being wrongly accused of starting a fire that killed his best friend.

Director:

Alfred Hitchcock

Writers:

Peter Viertel (original screen play), Joan Harrison (original screen play)

Stars:

Priscilla Lane, Robert Cummings, Otto Kruger

1 nomination.

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. Henrietta Sutton
Vaughan Glaser	...	Philip Martin aka Mr. Miller (as Vaughan Glazer)
Dorothy Peterson	...	Mrs. Mason
Ian Wolfe	...	Robert
Frances Carson	...	Society Woman
Murray Alper	...	Truck Driver
Kathryn Adams	...	Mrs. Brown -- Young Mother
Pedro de Cordoba	...	Bones - Circus Troupe
Billy Curtis	...	Midget - Circus Troupe

Storyline

Los Angeles aircraft worker Barry Kane evades arrest after he is unjustly accused of sabotage. Following leads, he travels across the country to New York City trying to clear his name by exposing a gang of fascist-supporting saboteurs led by apparently respectable Charles Tobin. Along the way, he involves Pat Martin, eventually preventing another major act of sabotage. They finally catch up with Frank Frye, the man who actually committed the act of sabotage at the aircraft factory.

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Plot Keywords:

sabotage | factory | aircraft factory | fire | on the run | 

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Taglines:

You'd like to say - IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE!... but every jolting scene is TRUE!!

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Genres:

Thriller | War

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Certificate:

Passed

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

24 April 1942 (USA)

Also Known As:

Cinquième colonne

Filming Locations:

Owens Lake, California, USA

Company Credits

Production Co:

Frank Lloyd Productions,Universal Pictures

Technical Specs

Runtime:

109 min (copyright length)

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Mirrophonic Recording)

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The only actor that Sir Alfred Hitchcock gave much direction to was Otto Kruger, who never pleased him as the head villain. Otherwise, he preferred to let the actors and actresses work out their roles in rehearsal and gave them direction mostly on timing in front of the camera. He believed he could solve any acting problem with camera work, such as filming Kruger's lengthy fascist soliloquy from a disconcerting distance.

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Goofs

At the beginning, a soda-ash fire extinguisher is filled with gasoline. Soda-ash units are pressurized when they're turned upside down. This opens a stopper, releasing sulfuric acid into the water which is mixed with baking soda. This results in a large amount of carbon dioxide being generated, pressurizing the canister. Without this gas the gasoline would hardly come out.

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Quotes

[Philip, a blind man, explains to Patricia why he believes Barry is innocent]
Phillip Martin: Don't you know I can see a great deal farther than you can? I can see intangible things. For example, innocence.

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Connections

Spoofed in The Wrong Guy (1997)

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Soundtracks

Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy
(uncredited)
Written by Don Raye and Hugh Prince
[Instrumental version heard coming from Mrs. Mason's neighbors' house.]

User Reviews

On the Road

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.