I recently acquired the Alfred Hitchcock Masterpiece Collection – a set of 14 Hitchcockian tales of suspense for us to gorge on.
Last night I popped in the first film of the set…Saboteur. 1942, starring Priscilla Lane, Robert Cummings and Norman Lloyd. It follows the story of an aircraft factory that was sabotaged and the blame is put upon an innocent man and he takes off in search of the real saboteur. His travels across the country have him encounter a motley crew of characters, including a blind man who helps him along his way, as well as some circus performers.
In the end, he discovers that the saboteur is part of a larger organization who are sabotaging various targets across the country and it ends in a spectacular showdown between the original saboteur and the framed man.
All in all, it was a pretty good film. In watching an older film like this, it’s interesting to think about how they filmed certain sequences or created certain effects. I found it entertaining that the entire film leads up to this spectacular showdown on top of the torch of the Statue of Liberty. I can only imagine how that conversation must have went…”Alright, you see, we have our characters interact with each other on a manhunt throughout the entire movie…but we need the big pay-off…something no one has seen before.” “How about a fight on top of the Statue of Liberty?” “Great Scott, that’s it!”
So even though it was a cool scene, I felt it was out of place with the rest of the film. But maybe I’ll watch more films of this era and realize that they all have spectacular end sequences.
First Hitchcock film is a hit!