Sabotage

Sabotage (1936) 

Notable cast/crew: Sylvia Sidney as Mrs Verloc.  Oskar Homolka as Verloc.  Desmond Tester as Stevie.  John Loder as Ted Spencer.

Running time: 76 minutes

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Plot: There is a blackout in London, the work of a saboteur.  The saboteur is Verloc, who runs a cinema.  He returns home and pretends to have been sleeping so his wife won't know.  Ted Spencer, the greengrocer next door, thought he saw him sneaking back in, but Verloc quickly shoots that down.  Spencer is interested in Verloc because he's actually an undercover agent for Scotland Yard.

Tick...tick...tick

Verloc meets with his superiors, and they are dissatisfied with the results of the blackout.  They want him to place a bomb, but he refuses, not wanting to be involved in murder.  They have him under financial pressure, though, and he accedes to their demand.

Spencer takes Mrs Verloc and her young brother, Stevie, to lunch where in the course of conversation he asks her about her husband.  Her avowal of his good nature and kindness make it clear to Spencer that she is oblivious to what Verloc is up to.  Verloc is meeting with a bomb-maker who is using a pet store as a front.  The bomb, once delivered to Verloc, will already be primed to go off at 1:45 so there is no stopping the plot once set in motion.

Spencer bungles an attempt to eavesdrop on Verloc when he meets with fellow conspirators, and one of them recognizes him as a Scotland Yard man.  Spencer reveals what he knows to Mrs Verloc, but Verloc overhears.  Verloc now knows he's under scrutiny so he decides to throw them off by having Stevie unknowingly deliver the bomb which arrived stowed inside a birdcage.

While Spencer questions Verloc, Stevie sets off in delivery of the bomb.  He is constantly delayed by crowds, salesmen hawking wares in the street, and the normal absent-mindedness of an adolescent boy.  He boards a bus, where, ironically, the conductor is concerned about the film canisters the boy carries since the film is flammable.  The boy is on the bus when the bomb goes off.  All on board are killed.

Spencer was with Verloc when the bomb went off, giving Verloc an apparent alibi.  In the wreckage, Spencer finds a film can which the press gets wind off and runs in the paper.  Mrs Verloc sees it and realizes why Stevie is missing.  Verloc admits it to her and tries to blame it on Spencer's interference in forcing him to have to use Stevie.  She stabs him to death.

Spencer arrives to arrest Verloc but finds her sitting near the body.  They decide to leave the country.  The bomb maker arrives to get the birdcage hoping to clear any evidence of his participation in the plot.  Mrs Verloc tries to confess to the police who have arrived, but the bomb maker, seeing the police, panics and sets off a bomb he is carrying in his coat.  All evidence is destroyed, and Mrs Verloc leaves with Spencer.

MacGuffin: None

Hitchcock cameo: None

Hitchcock themes: None

Verdict: A solid effort, but ultimately falls short of his other movies in this run of thrillers.  It's a short film, so there isn't much exploration of the motivation of Verloc.  He is simply a callous man willing to do what he is told to cause terror.  Hitchcock would later express regret in interviews with Francois Truffaut and Dick Cavett that, by using the shock of the bomb going off, he had built up suspense with the audience and given them no outlet for it thus agitating them instead of relieving them.  He didn't feel the negative reaction was around a boy being killed so much as the fact that the bomb went off  at all.  Had he done it again, Hitchcock said he would have had someone discover the bomb and dispose of it at the last second as that is the proper way to allow the audience to release the tension that his been built up emotionally.  The music in that sequence mimics a clock ticking through short bursts of strings.  The effect is not unlike that in Psycho where the sharp, staccato, violin screeches suggest the slash, slash, slash of the knife.

This was released as The Woman Alone in the US.  It was not a major success with most agreeing the unsettling nature of the bomb going off hurt the reception of the film.  It has parallels to terrorist events today, but without delving into any characterization, it feels superficial.  The movie is too plot-driven to the point of the casting being largely irrelevant.  The characters only exist to advance the story, and it's difficult to identify with them which leaves you feeling more like an observer of a set piece rather than being drawn into the story.

Out of five bananas, I give it:

Next review: Young and Innocent