Tuesday, September 03, 2019

Movie review - "Saboteur" (1942) ***1/2

Not super highly regarded Hitchcock in part because the star duo are B listers Bob Cummings and Priscilla Lane who the director later disdained to Truffaut (baby boomer critics had incredible influence on how certain films were regarded). They were ostensibly hired mostly for reasons for cost and while they're not Cary Grant and Grace Kelly both do bring something to the party - young kids in over their heads, sweet and bumbling like the duo in Young and Innocent.

It's a real chance for Cummings who is on screen most of the time and doesn't let the side down... though to be honest he doesn't have the raw star power of a Cary Grant that would help the three scenes where people believe he's innocent just because they like him (the truck driver, the blind man, the circus dude). This feels like simply lazy writing and also there is inevitable propaganda. (Aside - there's a remarkable amount of people in this film willing to help Nazi saboteurs, both falsely accused and real ones).

Where the film is really outstanding is in its villains - Fry the creepy saboteur, the kindly old grandfather who lives on a ranch and dotes on his granddaughter, the bespectacled assassin who talks about the golden curls he had as a child, the housekeeper with the gun in her purse, the society dowager. These are terrific.

There's also some very fine suspense sequences - the initial sabotage, the climactic attack on a boat, a chase through a movie theatre, and the final fight on the Statue of Liberty (not really a fight, more that Fry slips off)

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