100. Sabotage (1936)

Directed By Alfred Hitchcock

Synopsis

A saboteaur starts being investigated by the Scotland Yard. He has a wife... all goes wrong but in the end is solved! Yay!


Review

It is hard to write a synopsis of this film without completely enjoying your enjoyment of it. Half of the enjoyment here is the suspense that Hitchcock projects on you. When the boy travels to deliver a bomb for example was one of the most tense moments on this list until now.

The film is called Sabotage, but really it ends up being a film about terrorism as we know it today. Actually there are images here that are strangely familiar, the blown up bus seems straight out 07/07 in London, there's also the bomb guy who hides the explosive chemicals in bottles of ketchup and other harmless stuff that when mixed are extremely dangerous.

It really does feel at times that surely terrorism in Britain is an homage to Hitchcocks Sabotage, although I really don't think terrorists are that referential. Still, it ends up being a very powerful and very devious film. Hitchcock shows his talent for little character portraits again, with the wife of the bird shop owner for example, or the owner himself, strangely obssessed with explosives.

Of course the film also comes across as a Daily Mail reader's wet dream, where foreigners are out to get us and no one is safe, but the film works very well. So get it from Amazon UK or US.

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia (potential spoiler):

The film was produced in the years immediately preceding World War II, and the unnamed hostile power behind the bombings is assumed to be Nazi Germany. At the time of its release, Europe was already preparing for war, and espionage was rampant between the European powers. The film can therefore be interpreted as a warning to civilians to be aware of foreigners, who threatened the safety of the country. (On a side note, Sabotage would have been called Secret Agent except Hitchcock had recently made another film with that title.)

Hitchcock took considerable liberties with the novel, transforming the highly political anarchists and socialists into foreign agents without any obvious political leanings. Verloc's shop is transformed into a movie theater (with the films being shown echoing the story), and the policeman investigating the case is cast as an undercover officer posing as a greengrocer. Verloc's first name has also been changed, presumably as Adolf had too many connotations by the time the film was made. To critics, however, the most troubling change was in the character of Stevie, Mrs Verloc's young brother, who is portrayed as a simpleton, with few of the visionary attributes of his literary counterpart. Stevie's death is a climactic moment in the plot, providing insight into Hitchcock's views about how the innocent suffer through random acts of violence. When a critic condemned Stevie's death as brutal and unnecessary, however, Hitchcock refused to defend his position and said that he regretted including it in the film—although with this he remained faithful to the novel.

The fact that the film was set in a movie theater allowed Hitchcock to reference the plot with contemporary films and storylines. Perhaps the most famous of these is the final film sequence, an animated short produced by Walt Disney.

Despite being regarded by many as her best performance, this was Sylvia Sidney’s only role for Hitchcock. They did not warm to each other and she refused to work for him again.

The only excerpt of the film I could find on youtube...: