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Review by Josh Lewis ★★★★ Liked

hitch is doing like six different american genre films here and the cops are the bad guys in all of them. the movie theatre bit and statue of liberty climax are sublime—believe it was brody who said that this is a portrait of "a country that lives in the image of its movies," which, totally.

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Possibly the finest opening (the black smoke seeping into the frame stage left) and closing (the Statue of Liberty torn sleeve) sequences in Hitch’s entire oeuvre. Not to mention two or three diamond-chiseled scenes written by Dorothy Parker. The whole movie is a menagerie of Movie Characters, including a wizened blind man, a literal train car full of circus performers, and mustache-twirling anarcho-fascist big bad who gives great world-dominating speech. Unfortunately it’s all hinged to a cipher lead. (Found myself wondering how this would work with Jimmy Stewart rather than Robert Cummings.) Hitchcock is always flashing lights on the Wrong Man, mistaken identity leading to treachery. He’d have made special films about identity theft, “cancellation,” and the anonymous internet age.

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“Saboteur” has all the bombast and brass to earn its reputation as the first truly American Hitchcock film. 

A remake of the director’s early quintessentially British “39 Steps,” “Saboteur” appropriates the plot, but… bigger! Louder! Now with Nazis! 

Hitchcock’s British films were often exercises in the discomfort of expanding tension within a confined space. A train, a mansion, even the narrow streets of Fleet Street in “Lodger’s” London. “Saboteur” is, on the contrary, a demonstration of tension expanded -over- a larger space. 

Naturally, this is a method more prone to messiness than tautness, and “Saboteur” so occupies a place in Hitchcock’s filmography of imperfect results with grand ambitions behind them. An achievement for any other director… middling, for one of…

13

I think I'm finding out one of the difficulties of working through Hitchcock's work in chronological order.

Quite a lot of his early films are dry runs for bigger and better films in the years to follow. As such, going back and watching films like Saboteur after you've already seen the later, better versions is a less satisfying experience than if you saw them for the first time all those years ago. Saboteur suffers with a number of other problems as well.

Basically, it is 30 minutes of brilliance and 80 minutes of nonsense. The first 15 minutes are absolutely superb with a fantastic credits sequence and then a particularly memorable death-by-inferno. Then the last 15 minutes are action packed…

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Action! - The Master & The Fan: Hitchcock's Bumping Road To Mastering Suspense

Although, as I've already stated, the gifted Alfred Hitchcock, Master of Suspense, has showed signs of life, it's likely that his most distinguishing characteristics are just now coming to the fore. Not just in the protagonists (both in personality and appearance, I mean, Cummings looks like Grant and Stewart), but also in many of the settings and villains that our hero must face. There's even an entire scenario that fans of North by Northwest will recognize, albeit instead of a famous mountain, it's replaced by an iconic statue.

Again, the performances fall short of those of Grant, Stewart, Leigh, and others. However, our performers do well in their…

Review by Justin Peterson ★★★½ Liked

Recommended by: Marvin123

A man on the run and plenty of suspense ... we must be talking about an
Alfred Hitchcock movie.

"If it had been any other sort of crime, if a man had stolen because he was starving, even if a man had committed murder to defend himself, maybe I wouldn't tell the police. But there's only one reason why men commit sabotage, and that's worse than murder."

I had been meaning to watch Hitchcock's 'Sabotage' for the longest time. But thanks to my good pal Marvin123 I ended up watching Saboteur first, a Hitchcock film I had never even heard of ... which is surprising since it has an exciting climax featuring the Statue of Liberty.

(Quick…

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I mean, lesser Hitchcock is still Hitchcock...

While he doesn't nail the themes he tackles in some of his more effective thrillers, Saboteur feels like a breakthrough for him in some ways. On the heels of his first true masterpiece (IMO) Shadow of a Doubt, he seems to have a fine grasp on how to build suspense and has finally figured out his signature camerawork. Zooming in on important details, and letting audiences in on details that the characters don't know became signature to his work later in the 40s and into the 50s. The Statue of Liberty sequence seems to be a precursor to the Rushmore sequence in North by Northwest as well.

What it comes down to is…

Review by Lexzilla ★★★½

Doctors say that smoking will kill you. And Hitchcock says it’s the key to escaping from the house where you’re being held prisoner. They both make excellent points, it’s hard to know who to trust.

This innocent man on the run to prove he isn’t the bad guy film is a lot of fun. It’s both The 39 Steps dialled up to eleven and a bit of a precursor to North by Northwest. Which means suspense, American iconography, enemies to lovers, shadowy organisations and surprisingly helpful locals encountered along the way. The patriotic propaganda veers a bit cheesy on occasion, but it’s forgiven when the bad guys they’re up against are thematically nazis.

Hitchcock is serving some truly outstanding visuals…

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Hitchcock #44

Pat, this moment belongs to me. No matter what happens, they can never take it away from me.

Watched in memory of Norman Lloyd. He was 106!

A film as relevant today in its political messaging as it was during the heat of WWII, Saboteur is a perfectly formulated vehicle for the great American ideals. While somewhat sloppy in minor moments of transition, the chase here is thrilling potentially leading to one of Hitch’s more iconic climaxes that surely symbolizes the film’s own messaging in sublime detail. Hitch executed the “wrong man” trope somewhere around a dozen times (if not more) but every single one brings something worth while to the table. In fact, many claim Saboteur to be…

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“You know, somehow I’ve suddenly had enough of this country; the war has made it grim.”

A clearly innocent man (Robert Cummings) becomes a patsy in an ongoing scheme to sabotage the American war effort against the Axis powers. Along with an initially dubious companion (Priscilla Lane), he must evade an immense nationwide manhunt while simultaneously pursuing the true culprits.

As is often the case with Alfred Hitchcock’s middling projects, Saboteur’s focus remains resolutely on filmmaking craft rather than its uninspired scenario (from Joan Harrison, Peter Viertel and the immortal poet Dorothy Parker). The foregrounded blamelessness of its tepid hero saps the run time of potential ambiguity, though on a scene-to-scene basis Hitchcock still delights with some rather daring stunt…

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Saboteur runs along similar lines to many films Hitchcock made before 1942. At its core, the film is the story of a man falsely accused of a crime he didn't commit, and having to go on the run in order to prove his innocence - uncovering a shadowy conspiracy along the way. Basically it's The 39 Steps except longer and with a bigger budget. There's a varied array of weird and wonderful ing characters too - an overly friendly trucker, a perceptive blind man and a bus full of circus folk in the first half; all of them willing to our lead in spite of the fact he's on the run from the law. It verges on parody at…

Review by Josh Gillam ★★½

Saboteur gets off to a bang instantly, Bob Cummings’ innocent factory worker framed and immediately sent on the run; it’s always interesting to see a film made just as the US was entering the Second World War, especially as this was development even before Pearl Harbor was ever attacked. 

Apparently this let Alfred Hitchcock be more explicit about the German menace, and you can really feel the jittery, paranoid energy here, a moment in time just as a whole country was gearing up for the unknown. The actual threat adds an extra edge into his “man on the run” story that’s not always there in other, similar films, with a handy chance for propaganda to motivate audiences in these early days,…