Saboteur (film)

Saboteur is a 1942 American spy thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock with a screenplay written by Peter Viertel, Joan Harrison and Dorothy Parker. The film stars Robert Cummings, Priscilla Lane and Norman Lloyd.
Plot.
Aircraft factory worker Barry Kane is accused of starting a fire at the Stewart Aircraft Works in Glendale, California, an act of sabotage that killed his friend Mason. Kane believes the culprit is a man named Fry, who handed him a fire extinguisher filled with gasoline. The investigators find no one named "Fry" on the plant workers' list.
Kane remembers Fry's address after having seen it on an envelope, and travels to a ranch in the High Desert. The ranch owner, Charles Tobin, reveals he is working with the saboteurs. Kane learns from a piece of mail that Fry has gone to Soda City. Tobin calls the sheriff, but Kane escapes, taking refuge with a kind blind man whose niece, Patricia Martin, is a model famous for appearing on billboards. Although her uncle asks her to take Kane to the blacksmith shop to remove his handcuffs, she attempts to take him to the police. Kane insists he is innocent and kidnaps Martin. When he takes control of the car and stops, she jumps out and tries to signal a passing car. He uses her car's generator's fan belt pulley to break his handcuffs apart, causing the car to break down.
As night falls, the couple stows away on a circus train. The circus performers recognize them as fugitives but shield them from the police. Kane and Martin reach Soda City, a ghost town where the saboteurs are preparing to blow up Boulder Dam. Kane is discovered by the saboteurs but conceals Martin and convinces them that he is an ally. After foiling their plan, Kane convinces them to remove his manacles and take him with them to New York. He learns of their plan to sabotage the launching of a new U.S. Navy battleship at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Kane's performance has fooled Martin as well; she contacts the authorities, hoping to get to New York to obstruct the saboteurs' plans.
The saboteurs reach New York but find the phone at their office disconnected, indicating the police are on to them. They meet with New York dowager Mrs. Sutton and other conspirators during a party. Kane finds the captured Martin, who was betrayed by a corrupt sheriff. As Kane signals her to escape, Tobin arrives and exposes him. Tobin has Kane locked in the mansion's cellar. Martin is imprisoned in an office at Rockefeller Center. The next morning, Kane triggers a fire alarm to escape. Martin drops a note from the office window, which is found by cab drivers.
Kane reaches the Navy Yard a few minutes before the launch and searches for the saboteurs. He spots Fry in a fake newsreel camera truck, prepared to blow up the slipway during the launching. Their struggle prevents Fry from detonating the explosion until after the launch of the USS "Alaska" battleship.
Fry takes Kane prisoner, and with his two accomplices, returns to the Rockefeller Center office. The police and FBI, alerted by Martin's note, are waiting for them. The accomplices are caught, but Fry dodges into the back of Radio City Music Hall. He shoots a man in the audience and escapes in the panic. Kane sees Fry get into a taxi. Still holding Kane in custody, the FBI refuses to follow Fry, so Kane tells Martin to shadow the saboteur. She follows Fry onto the ferry to Bedloe's Island, attracting his attention, and then to the Statue of Liberty. She calls the FBI, and at their direction, goes into the statue to find Fry and distract him. In the statue's crown, she talks with Fry, stalling him until Kane and the FBI arrive.
Kane escapes his escort and encounters Martin, who tells him that Fry is escaping. Kane pursues Fry onto the torch, confronting him at gunpoint. While backing away from Kane, Fry falls over the platform's railing and clings to the statue's hand. Kane tries to save Fry, but as the police and FBI arrive, Fry falls to his death. Kane climbs back up and embraces Martin.
Production.
Development.
Hitchcock was under contract to David O. Selznick, so he first pitched the idea for the film to him; Selznick gave the okay for a script to be written, assigning John Houseman to keep an eye on its progress and direction. Val Lewton, Selznick's story editor, eventually rejected the script, which reviewer Leonard Maltin later called "extremely offbeat," so Selznick forced Hitchcock to offer it to other studios, "causing ill feelings between the producer and his director since it not only showed a lack of belief in Hitchcock's abilities, but also because the terms of Hitchcock's contract would net Selznick a three-hundred percent profit on the sale."
Universal signed on, but Hitchcock could not have the two actors he wanted for the leading roles. Gary Cooper was uninterested in the project and Barbara Stanwyck had other commitments. He settled on Robert Cummings who had a new contract with Universal, while Priscilla Lane was borrowed from Warner Bros. although her scenes had to wait while she finished "Arsenic and Old Lace", a production that was eventually shelved until its 1944 release.
In November 1941, Universal announced that Hitchcock would make the film for the studio, and it would be produced by Frank Lloyd and Jack Skirball. Cummings and Lane were to star. Hitchcock later said he was "lucky" to have "young players who are intelligent and sensitive to direction" and "players who are unmistakeably young American. It was easy to bring out the familiar qualities to make Bob seem the loveable boy at the next lathe or around the corner. In Priscilla too I had the resolute and daring attributes typical of American girlhood. I wanted the boy and girl in "Saboteur" to suggest the thrilling importance of unimportant people, to forget they were movie stars, to remember only that they were free and in terrible danger."
Universal did bring in Dorothy Parker to write a few scenes, "mostly the patriotic speeches given by the hero." Although Parker had been brought in to "punch up the dialogue", Hitchcock also called in Peter Viertel to continue to work on the script.
Hitchcock described the film as a series of "cameos" like "The 39 Steps". It was originally meant to finish with a climax at the movie theatre which was showing Abbott and Costello's film "Ride 'Em Cowboy". According to "The New York Times" "the studio feels that the booking will materially enhance the prestige of the comedians." However, that film was not used in the final movie.
Shooting.
Filming took place from December 1941 to February 1942.
Hitchcock used extensive location footage in the film, which was unusual for Hollywood productions at the time. Second unit director Vernon Keays and cinematographer Charles Van Enger shot exteriors in the Alabama Hills of Lone Pine, California, and John P. Fulton shot the background footage in New York City. For the New York city footage, special long lenses were used to shoot from great distances. One background shot shows a capsized ship in the harbor. Fry glances at it and smiles knowingly. The ship shown is the former "SS Normandie", which burned and sank in February 1942, leading to rumors of German sabotage.
There was clever matching of the location footage with studio shots, many using matte paintings for background, for example in shots of the western ghost town, "Soda City". The famed Statue of Liberty sequence takes place on the torch platform, which had actually been closed to public access since the Black Tom sabotage in 1916. A mock-up built for filming accurately depicted this part of the statue. The scene also used innovative visual effects. In particular, Lloyd lay on his side on a black saddle on a black floor while the camera was moved from close-up to 40 feet above him, making him appear to drop downward, away from the camera. Film taken from the top of the Statue was then superimposed onto the black background.
There was no music score for the film's Radio City sequence; instead, Hitchcock combined action shown on the theater screen (including gunshots) with the action in the theater. The contrast of the large screen images with the shootout below encompassed the audience into the action and was one of the more effective scenes in "Saboteur".
Hitchcock makes his trademark cameo appearance about an hour into the film (1:04:37), standing at a kiosk in front of Cut Rate Drugs in New York as the saboteurs' car pulls up. In his book-length interview with François Truffaut (Simon & Schuster, 1967), Hitchcock says he and Parker filmed a cameo showing them as the elderly couple who see Cummings and Lane hitchhiking and drive away, but that he decided to change that shot to the existing cameo.
Scripting, pre-production, and principal photography on "Saboteur" wrapped in 15 weeks, the fastest Hitchcock had ever worked. By January 1942, the film was in post-production. Early in April, "Saboteur" was "redflagged" by officials in the War Office who had concerns about the scene involving the "SS Normandie". Regarding this scene, Hitchcock said: "the Navy raised hell with Universal about these shots because I implied that the "Normandie" had been sabotaged, which was a reflection on their lack of vigilance in guarding it." Despite the official objections, the scene remained in the final film. "Saboteur" was premiered in Washington, D.C. on April 22, 1942, with Hitchcock, Cummings and Lane, along with 80 U.S. Senators and 350 U.S. Congressmen, in attendance.
Use of irony and symbolism.
Hitchcock made use of irony on numerous occasions in "Saboteur". For example, early in the film, the authorities are seen as menacing, while the well-respected rancher and kind grandfather is an enemy agent. In contrast, only ordinary folks and the down-on-their-luck perceive Kane's innocence and offer trust: a long-haul truck driver, a blind householder and the circus freaks. In New York City, wealthy Mrs. Sutton is secretly funding an enemy group.
"Saboteur" is an early example of the distrust of authority that is one of Hitchcock's hallmarks.
Driving along the New York waterfront, Kane's car passes by the capsized hulk of the liner "SS Normandie", an ominous warning of what could happen if the conspirators succeed in their plans.
The final battle symbolizing tyranny against democracy takes place on the torch of the Statue of Liberty.
Reception.
"Saboteur" did "very well at the box office even with its B-list cast"; it made a "tidy profit for all involved." Bosley Crowther of "The New York Times" called the film a "swift, high-tension film which throws itself forward so rapidly that it permits slight opportunity for looking back. And it hurtles the holes and bumps which plague it with a speed that forcefully tries to cover them up." Crowther commented that "so abundant [are] the breathless events that one might forget, in the hubbub, that there is no logic in this wild-goose chase"; he also questioned the "casual presentation of the FBI as a bunch of bungling dolts, [the film's] general disregard of authorized agents, and [its] slur on the navy yard police", all of which "somewhat vitiates the patriotic implications which they have tried to emphasize in the film."
"Time" magazine called "Saboteur" "one hour and 45 minutes of almost simon-pure melodrama from the hand of the master"; the film's "artful touches serve another purpose which is only incidental to "Saboteur"s melodramatic intent. They warn Americans, as Hollywood has so far failed to do, that fifth columnists can be outwardly clean and patriotic citizens, just like themselves."
Norman Lloyd recalls that Ben Hecht told Hitchcock after seeing the death of a character in the finale, "He should have had a better tailor."
Precursor to "North by Northwest".
Critic Rob Nixon, writing for Turner Classic Movies, points out that "Saboteur" shares several essential elements with Hitchcock's later movie "North by Northwest" (1959), including the ordinary/every-man protagonist who gets accused of a terrible crime and must avoid being captured by the police as he attempts to solve the mystery and clear his name (which is a recurring theme in Hitchcock's movies), and, the climactic scene in which the protagonist attempts to save another character from falling off a huge national monument.