Sabotage (film)
| Sabotage | |
|---|---|
 Sabotage poster under an alternative title |
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| Directed by | Alfred Hitchcock |
| Produced by | Michael Balcon |
| Written by | Joseph Conrad (novel The Secret Agent) Charles Bennett (screenplay) |
| Starring | Sylvia Sidney Oskar Homolka John Loder |
| Cinematography | Bernard Knowles |
| Distributed by | General Film Distributors (GFD) Ltd. |
| Release date(s) |  December, 1936 |
| Running time | 76 min. |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
Sabotage, also released as The Woman Alone, is a 1936 British thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. It was based on Joseph Conrad's novel The Secret Agent.
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Plot
Karl Verloc (Oscar Homolka), the owner of a cinema, is part of a gang of saboteurs from an unnamed European country who are planning a series of attacks in London. Their exact motives are not made clear. Scotland Yard suspects Verloc's involvement in the plot and assigns Detective Sergeant Ted Spencer (John Loder) to investigate Verloc, initially under cover. Spencer conducts the investigation posing as a greengrocer's helper, selling fruit and vegetables in a shop right next to the cinema.
Verloc's young and beautiful wife (Sylvia Sidney) believes that her husband is a good man because he has been kind to her and her little brother, Stevie (Desmond Tester), who lives with them. However, gradually she comes to suspect that her husband may be one of the people behind the terrorist attacks. The final straw comes when her little brother is killed, along with many other people, when a bus explodes. The boy had thought that he was simply delivering a film canister, but he was unknowingly carrying a time bomb for Verloc, to be detonated in the London Underground station under Piccadilly Circus. The boy had become distracted along the way, which had delayed his delivery, and thus the bomb exploded en route to its final target.
Verloc confesses to his wife, but then blames Scotland Yard and Spencer for Stevie's death, saying that they were the ones who prevented Verloc from successfully carrying out the bomb delivery himself. Soon afterwards, as Verloc and his wife are preparing to eat dinner, she stabs him to death with a knife. When Spencer arrives to arrest Verloc he realizes what has happened, but insists that she shouldn't admit that she killed her husband. Nevertheless, she starts to confess her crime to a policeman. Then an explosion and fire at the cinema intervene, destroying all the evidence of her crime and effectively preventing the policeman from remembering whether it was before or after the explosion that she told him, "My husband is dead!"
At the end we see Mrs Verloc and Ted Spencer walk away together.
Analysis
The film was produced in the years immediately preceding World War II, and the unnamed hostile power behind the bombings has been assumed by many viewers to be Nazi Germany.
Hitchcock took considerable liberties with Joseph Conrad's novel, transforming the highly political anarchists and socialists into foreign agents without any obvious political leanings.[1] Verloc's shop is transformed into a cinema, with the films being shown echoing the story, and the policeman investigating the case is an undercover officer posing as a greengrocer.[2] Verloc's first name has also been changed, presumably because Adolf, his name in the novel, had too many connotations by the time the film was made. Finally, Stevie, Mrs Verloc's brother, is portrayed as a simpleton, with few of the visionary attributes of his literary counterpart. Stevie's death is a climactic moment in the plot, providing insight into Hitchcock's views about how the innocent suffer through random acts of violence.[2] When a critic condemned Stevie's death as brutal and unnecessary, however, Hitchcock said that he regretted including it in the film— even though he remained faithful to the novel in doing so.[1]
The fact that the film was set in a cinema allowed Hitchcock to link the plot to contemporary films and storylines. Perhaps the most famous of these is the final film sequence, an animated short produced by Walt Disney.
Hitchcock wanted to cast Robert Donat (with whom he had previously worked in The 39 Steps) but was forced to cast John Loder due to Donat's chronic asthma.[3][1]
Mrs Verloc was Sylvia Sidney’s only role for Hitchcock. Reportedly, they did not warm to each other and she refused to work for him again.
Cast
- Sylvia Sidney as Mrs Verloc
- Oskar Homolka as Karl Anton Verloc
- Desmond Tester as Steve
- John Loder as Sergeant Ted Spencer
- Joyce Barbour as Renee
- Matthew Boulton as Superintendent Talbot
- S.J. Warmington as Hollingshead
- William Dewhurst as The Professor
- Charles Hawtrey as a Studious Youth
References
External links
- Sabotage at the Internet Movie Database
- Sabotage at Google Video
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