LIFEBOAT Movie Review

1944 Alfred Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock's experiment in propaganda is certainly not his finest moment, but it's still an entertaining, often suspenseful film, despite an unusually artificial structure and effects that are dated. As the title states, the entire story is told within a lifeboat. In the opening shot, the smokestack of the Frazier sinks beneath the surface of the ocean. Floating in the water among the debris is the corpse of a sailor from the German U-boat that attacked the ship and then was sunk itself.

Alone in a rather spacious lifeboat is Connie Porter (Tallulah Bankhead), with her mink coat, movie camera, and attitude. A prototypically liberated woman, she's some kind of correspondent or writer who views the whole war as material for her next work, current circumstances not withstanding. Her boat soon fills up with a diverse mix of survivors: “Ritt” Rittenhouse (Henry Hull), the wealthy industrialist; George “Joe” Spencer (Canada Lee), the black steward; Kovac (John Hodiak), the Southside Chicago radical; Alice MacKenzie (Mary Anderson), nurse on a mission; Gus Smith (William Bendix), jivetalking New Yorker; Mrs. Higgens (Heather Angel), desperately trying to save her infant child; Garrett (Hume Cronyn), the Brit sailor; and finally Willy (Walter Slezak), the German sub commander posing as a common sailor.

Once the group has been introduced, they set about squabbling about the best way to face their various logistic, health, and political problems. Given the limitations that Hitchcock places on the film, the story sometimes loses intensity in the slow moments. The script was begun by John Steinbeck and completed by Jo Swerling, with uncredited additions by Ben Hecht and, according to Hitchcock, MacKinlay Kantor. They allow each of the characters his or her moment at center stage to reveal something significant. The characters are interesting and the cast is more than capable, but the film sometimes looks and sounds like a stage play misplaced in a studio water tank.

Most of the film's energy is supplied by Walter Slezak, who makes Willy one of the most wonderfully evil Nazi rat-swine ever to infest the screen, as he tries to get rid of his opposition woman by woman, man by man, limb by limb. The filmmakers’ political points are equally blatant. In the book Hitchcock Truffaut (Simon & Schuster. 1967), Hitch says that he meant to make a microcosm of the war. “We wanted to show that at that moment there were two world forces confronting each other, the democracies and the Nazis, and while the democracies were completely disorganized, all of the Germans were clearly headed in the same direction. So here was a statement telling the democracies to put their differences aside temporarily and to gather their forces to concentrate on the common enemy, whose strength was precisely derived from a spirit of unity and of determination.”

Cast: Tallulah Bankhead (Constance Porter), John Hodiak (John Kovac), William Bendix (Gus Smith), Canada Lee (George “Joe” Spencer), Walter Slezak (Willy, the German Submarine Commander), Hume Cronyn (Stanley Garrett), Henry Hull (Charles “Ritt” Rittenhouse), Mary Anderson (Alice MacKenzie), Heather Angel (Mrs. Higgins), William Yetter Jr. (German Sailor); Written by: Jo Swerling; Cinematography by: Glen MacWilliams; Music by: Hugo Friedhofer; Technical Advisor: Thomas Fitzsimmons. Producer: 20th Century-Fox, Kenneth McGowan. Awards: New York Film Critics Awards ‘44: Best Actress (Bankhead); Nominations: Academy Awards ‘44: Best Black and White Cinematography, Best Director (Hitchcock), Best Story. Running Time: 96 minutes. Format: VHS, Beta, LV, Closed Caption.