Sabotage ***** (1936, Sylvia Sidney, Oskar Homolka, Desmond Tester) – Classic Movie Review 278

Alfred Hitchcock’s extremely tense and flavourful 1936 film version of Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent is one of his best British films of the 30s. Sabotage follows The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes in quality and popularity.

It centres on Mr Verloc (Oskar Homolka), the nice-seeming, apparently friendly and unassuming owner of a London fleapit movie theatre. Verloc is married to the equally unassuming, sad-looking Sylvia Verloc (Sylvia Sidney), who lives with her bright young teenage brother (Desmond Tester).

However, one day Mrs Verloc is naturally distraught and agonised when she finds that her husband is a saboteur working for a foreign country that is employing a series of secret agents to plant bombs and set them off in busy London locations, at huge risk to human life.

But Ted (John Loder), a nice, ordinary Scotland Yard undercover detective, has been put on the case. He works at the shop next door to the cinema to observe Verloc and the gang of foreign saboteurs.

Hitchcock directs with great energy and commitment. The film is packed with the director’s characteristic trademark signatures and flourishes, and he balances his typical mixture of dark and menacing tone and lighter comic moments extremely expertly and effectively.

A lot of attention is paid to the details of the way of life in an English cinema in the 30s, how a lower middle-class family might live then and to creating a variety of quirky period characters. All this pays off handsomely as great background texture for the drama of the thriller to play out against.

It’s a very subtle touch that the murderous traitor, deceiver, liar and villain Verloc is so charismatic both in the script as a character and in Homolka’s performance, so that the audience sympathises with him and not with the handsome, upright detective who is also the romantic lead for Mrs Verloc.

This is a complicated story with unusual characters and it demands fine performances – and gets them. The acting from all the four principals is top-notch, realistic, subtle and convincing, with a standout performance from Homolka.

Hitchcock would later claim that he regretted staging the violent climax to a suspense sequence when he lets a bomb explode in a busy London bus. Hitchcock alleged: ‘I made a serious mistake in having the little boy carry the bomb in a situation that got him too much sympathy from the audience, so that when the bomb exploded and he was killed the public was resentful.’ But this a very powerful, distinctive moment that adds a lot to the atmosphere of fear and danger in the movie. And of course Hitchcock knew that very well.

The impressive production is costly and big-scale for a British movie of the period, and includes a remarkable set of a busy street scene with a tramline. It was filmed at Gainsborough Studios, Shepherds Bush, West London.

Hitchcock makes his customary cameo nine minutes in, walking from centre screen to the side, leaning back and looking upwards.

The stars are billed as Sylvia Sydney and Oscar Homolka.

Confusingly, Hitchcock had already used Conrad’s title of The Secret Agent earlier that same year in 1936 for his film based on Somerset Maugham’s Ashenden. Sabotage was finally remade as The Secret Agent in 1996.

© Derek Winnert 2013 Classic Movie Review 278

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