Free Friday Hitch: Sabotage (1937)

Sabotage (released as The Woman Alone in the US)

Based on Joseph Conrad's equally troubling novel Secret Agent (and, so the confusion begins--Hitch had directed a year earlier Secret Agent, based on a Somerset Maugham story), Sabotage is Hitchcock at his darkest and most daring.  Hitch is pushing the envelope visually and pushing the audience.  He would later re-assess the wisdom of a certain scene--but, in my opinion, the bomb going off is exactly the film's point and it would have been treacle without having audiences understand the real cost of suicide bombs,

The film is remarkably contemporary in plot and theme--this is a sad commentary on our global politics and not Hitch/Conrad's prescience.

Sabotage is streamed to you through youtube.com.  The details of cast and crew follow.  I think this is a bit Hitchcock perfection--not one of his perfect trifles, like To Catch a Thief, but more in the mordant pudding of Shadow of a Doubt and Vertigo.




Cast and Crew

Directed by:
Alfred Hitchcock

Starring:
Sylvia Sidney - Mrs Verloc
Oskar Homolka - Karl Anton Verloc, Owner of Bijou Cinema
John Loder - Detective Sergeant Ted Spencer, Scotland Yard
Desmond Tester - Steve Verloc, Mrs Verloc's brother
Joyce Barbour - Renee
Matthew Boulton - Scotland Yard Superintendent. Talbot
S J Warmington - Insp. Hollingshead, Scotland Yard
William Dewhurst - The Professor / Bird Shop Owner / Bomb Maker
Clare Greet - Mrs Jones, the Cook

Produced by:
Michael Balcon
Ivor Montagu

Written by:
Joseph Conrad - original novel
Charles Bennett
Helen Simpson

Photographed by:
Bernard Knowles

Edited by:
Charles Frend

Music by:
Louis Levy - composer (uncredited)

Costume Design by:
Joe Strassner