Saboteur ****½ (1942, Robert Cummings, Priscilla Lane, Otto Kruger, Norman Lloyd) – Classic Movie Review 279

Alfred Hitchcock’s thrilling 1942 World War Two pursuit thriller Saboteur is a fast, fine and stylish exercise in excitement and high anxiety. Robert Cummings stars as innocent LA aircraft munitions factory worker Barry Kane, who chases spies and goes on the run across the United States when he is wrongly accused of sabotage and starting a fire that killed his best friend.

He travels to New York to clear his name by exposing a gang of fascist-supporting saboteurs, led by the respectable-seeming gentleman Charles Tobin (Otto Kruger).

While being pursued, Cummings meets the feisty, patriotic heroine, Pat Martin (Priscilla Lane), who, after initially wanting to hand him over to the police, eventually relents and tries to help him.

Hitchcock’s typical obsessions are reflected in the screenplay that is packed with provocative ideas and involving situations: The 39 Steps/ North by Northwest-style cross-country pursuit, the blind man in the house where handcuffed Cummings takes refuge, the ghost town with empty work yards, the circus freaks on the train, the couple in danger in a crowd at a ballroom, the Radio City Music Hall chase and the famous fight climax on the Statue of Liberty between Cummings and the Nazi agent villain Frank Fry (played by Norman Lloyd) who committed the sabotage at the aircraft factory.

Hitchcock used similar scenes over and over in his films, but here they play to utmost effect. It must have been a particularly personal project: unusually the story is credited to Hitchcock himself.

Perhaps because of its stars, Saboteur has a lightweight reputation, but it contains some of Hitchcock’s absolute best work. There are always more than enough thrills and spills to justify endless viewings.

Also in the cast are Alan Baxter, Clem Bevans, Alma Kruger, Murray Alper, Dorothy Peterson, Vaughan Glaser, Ian Wolfe, Samuel S Hinds, Charles Halton, Torin Thatcher, Hans Conried, Frances Carson, Kathryn Adams, Pedro de Cordoba, Billy Curtis and John Eldredge.

Hitchcock disloyally complained that had casting problems and couldn’t get the stars he wanted. He would have liked Gary Cooper in the star role. ‘Cummings belongs to the light-comedy class of actors, so that even when he’s in desperate straits, his features don’t convey any anguish. They imposed the leading lady on me as a fait accompli. She simply wasn’t the right type for a Hitchcock picture.’

It’s not even true either. Both stars are superb here, with just the right touch to make it work. And he re-employed Cummings later for Dial M for Murder.

Hitchcock’s customary cameo is as the deaf and dumb man outside the drugstore.

Kathryn Adams, who plays Young Mother, died on 14 October 2016, aged 96.

Norman Lloyd (November 8, 1914 – May 11, 2021).

RIP the wonderful American actor, producer, and director Norman Lloyd [Norman Perlmutter], who died on May 11, 2021 at age 106. Lloyd (born on November 8, 1914) was happily still alive and filming in 2015. His last film, Trainwreck, was released in 2015 after he was 100.

Lloyd’s long association with Alfred Hitchcock began with Saboteur (1942) and Spellbound (1945). A friend of blacklisted John Garfield and a marginal victim of the Hollywood blacklist, Lloyd was rescued by Hitchcock, who hired him as an associate producer and a director on his anthology TV series Alfred Hitchcock Presents in 1958.

© Derek Winnert 2013 Classic Movie Review 279

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