Sabotage (film)
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| Sabotage | |
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 Sabotage poster under an alternative title |
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| Directed by | Alfred Hitchcock |
| Produced by | Michael Balcon |
| Written by | Joseph Conrad (novel The Secret Agent) Charles Bennett (screenplay) |
| Starring | Sylvia Sidney Oskar Homolka John Loder |
| Cinematography | Bernard Knowles |
| Distributed by | General Film Distributors (GFD) Ltd. |
| Release date(s) |  December, 1936 |
| Running time | 76 min. |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Allmovie profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Sabotage, also released as The Woman Alone, is a 1936 British thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. It was based on Joseph Conrad's novel The Secret Agent.
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[edit] Plot
Karl Verloc (Oscar Homolka), the owner of a cinema, is part of a gang of saboteurs from an unnamed European country who are planning a series of attacks in London. The exact motives are not clear to us.
Scotland Yard suspects Verloc's involvement, and assigns Detective Sergeant Ted Spencer (John Loder, who replaced Robert Donat, who was too ill from asthma to play the part), to investigate (initially undercover) Verloc. Ted Spencer conducts the undercover investigation posing as a greengrocer's helper, selling fruits and vegetables in the shop right next to the cinema.
Verloc's young and beautiful wife (Sylvia Sidney) believes he is a good man who has been kind to her and her little brother in the past. However gradually she comes to suspect that her husband may be one of the people who are behind the attacks which are terrorizing the city.
The final straw is when her little brother, Stevie (Desmond Tester) is killed, along with many other people (and a cute puppy!) when a bus explodes. The boy had thought he was simply delivering a film canister, but he was unknowingly carrying a time bomb for Verloc to be detonated in the London Underground station under Piccadilly Circus. The boy had become distracted along the way, and this had delayed his delivery, and thus the bomb exploded en route to its final target.
Verloc confesses to his wife, but then he rationalizes it, blaming Scotland Yard and its detective Spencer for Stevie's death, saying that they were the ones who prevented Verloc from successfully carrying out the bomb delivery himself, which would have been on time.
Soon afterward, in a scene in which Verloc and his wife are preparing to eat dinner, she stabs him fatally with a knife. When Ted Spencer arrives to arrest Verloc on a bombing charge, he realizes what has happened. However he insists to Mrs. Verloc that she shouldn't admit that she killed her husband; over the course of time he has fallen in love with this young and vulnerable woman.
Mrs. Verloc nonetheless starts to confess her crime to a policeman who is present at the scene, but an explosion and fire at the cinema intervenes, destroying all the evidence of the crime, and effectively preventing the policeman from remembering whether it was before or after the explosion that Mrs.Verloc told him, "My husband is dead!"
We see Mrs. Verloc and Ted Spencer walk away together; now there is some hope for their future happiness.
[edit] Analysis
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.[1] 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.[2] 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.[2] 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.[1]
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.
Hitchcock desired to cast Robert Donat (with whom he had previously worked for The 39 Steps) but was forced to cast John Loder due to illness on the part of Donat.[3][1]
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.
[edit] Cast
- Sylvia Sidney as Mrs. Verloc
- Oskar Homolka as Karl Anton Verloc
- Desmond Tester as Steve
- John Loder as Sgt. Ted Spencer
- Joyce Barbour as Renee
- Matthew Boulton as Superintendent Talbot
- S.J. Warmington as Hollingshead
- William Dewhurst as The Professor
[edit] References
- ^ a b c Sabotage at screenonline
- ^ a b Spoto, Donald (1999). The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock. Da Capo, 155-158. ISBN 030680932X.
- ^ Sabotage at Turner Classic Movies
[edit] External links
- Sabotage at the Internet Movie Database
- Sabotage at Google Video
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