SABOTAGE (1936) B/W 76m dir: Alfred Hitchcock

w/Sylvia Sidney, Oscar Homolka, John Loder, Desmond Tester, Joyce Barbour, Matthew Boulton, S.J. Warmington, William Dewhurst, Peter Bull, Torin Thatcher, Austin Trevor, Clare Greet, Sam Wilkinson, Sara Allgood, Martita Hunt, Pamela Bevan

One of Hitchcock's best British films, this exciting espionage thriller was adapted from Joseph Conrad's novel, The Secret Agent (not to be confused with Hitchcock's film SECRET AGENT, released earlier the same year). It concerns a young woman who is unwittingly married to a saboteur.

Francois Truffaut interviewed the director about SABOTAGE in his book, Hitchcock:

"Francois Truffaut: [In SABOTAGE] the exposition is first rate. First, there is a close-up of a dictionary definition of the word 'sabotage,' then a close-up of an electric light bulb. Next, there's a long shot of a lighted street; then we're back to the light bulb, which suddenly goes out. In the darkened powerhouse someone discovering traces of sand says, 'Sabotage!' Back to the street, where a man is peddling lucifer matches. As two nuns pass by, there is the sound of demoniacal laughter. And now, you introduce Oscar Homolka, who is on his way home. In the house he goes over to the sink to wash his hands, and as he rubs them together, a little sand can be seen drifting to the bottom of the washbasin. ... The thing that's basically wrong with the whole picture is the characterization of the detective.

"Alfred Hitchcock: Well, Robert Donat was supposed to play the detective, but Alexander Korda refused to release him. The actor we got wasn't suitable, and I was forced to rewrite the dialogue during shooting. But aside from that, I made a serious mistake in having the little boy carry the bomb. A character who unknowingly carries a bomb around as if it were an ordinary package is bound to work up great suspense in the audience. The boy was involved 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.

"The way to handle it would have been for Homolka to kill the boy deliberately, but without showing that on the screen, and then for the wife to avenge her young brother by killing Homolka.

"F.T. Even that solution, I think, might have been resented by the audience. Making a child die in a picture is a rather ticklish matter; it comes close to an abuse of cinematic power.

"A.H. I agree with that; it was a grave error on my part.

"F.T. At the beginning of the picture you show how a child behaves when he is by himself; he does all sorts of things that are normally forbidden, slyly tasting the food, accidentally breaking a plate and hiding the pieces in a drawer. And by virtue of a dramatic law that favors the adolescent, all of these things endear the boy to us. The same thing is true for the personage of Verloc [Homolka], but for another reason --- probably because Oscar Homolka is plump. Generally speaking, chubby people are regarded as being kindly and rather lovable. And so when the detective starts to flirt with Verloc's wife, the situation is rather distasteful. The audience is for Verloc and against the detective!

"A.H. I agree with you, but that was really a matter of casting. John Loder, who played the detective, simply wasn't the right man for the part.

"F.T. Perhaps, but there's something else I object to here, as well as in some of your other pictures. Whenever you have a romantic relationship between the heroine and the policeman, I find the situation rather hard to swallow --- it's contrived. And it's occurred to me that the reason these situations somehow strike a false note is that you are not particularly fond of the police yourself.

"A.H. I'm not against the police; I'm just afraid of them.

"F.T. Aren't we all? Anyway, the fact is that in your pictures the cops always seem to turn up after the event; they never get things straight, and the hero, or hero-villain, as the case may be, is always well ahead of them. So that even when the cop is supposed to be 'the good guy,' or rather, the romantic hero, he's not always as convincing as he should be, perhaps because of your own halfhearted approach.

"One instance is the policeman in Shadow of a Doubt. Whereas the script requires him to compete, in terms of stature, with Uncle Charlie, he strikes one as being such an ordinary sort of fellow that it somehow spoils the ending for me.

"A.H. I see what you're getting at, but I assure you that again it's a matter of casting. This is true of Sabotage as well as Shadow of a Doubt. In both pictures the roles of the detectives were not sufficiently strong to attract important actors. The real problem is that the names of the actors cast in these parts are listed after the main title.

"F.T. What you're saying is that the secondary characters are more difficult to cast because their parts often call for more acting skill than the starring roles.

"A.H. Exactly.

"F.T. The best scene in Sabotage is during the meal, toward the ending, when, following, her brother's death, Sylvia Sidney decides to kill Oscar Homolka. Before this there are several visual incidents that evoke the dead child. Then as she stabs her husband, she utters a little cry of pain, so that the scene almost suggests suicide rather than murder. It's as if Homolka were allowing himself to be killed by Sylvia Sidney. Prosper Mérimée staged Carmen's death on the same dramatic principle, with the victim thrusting her body forward to meet the slayer's fatal stab.

"A.H. We had a problem there. You see, to maintain the public's sympathy for Sylvia Sidney, her husband's death had to be accidental. And to bring this off, it was absolutely essential that the audience identify itself with Sylvia Sidney. Here, we weren't trying to frighten anyone; we had to make the viewer feel like killing a man, and that's a good deal tougher.

"This is the way I handled it. When Sylvia Sidney brings the vegetable platter to the table, the knife acts as a magnet; it's almost as if her hand, against her will, is compelled to grab it. The camera frames her hand, then her eyes, moving back and forth between the two until suddenly her look makes it clear that she's become aware of the potential meaning of that knife. At that moment the camera moves back to Verloc, absently chewing his food as on any other day. Then we pan back to the hand and the knife.

"The wrong way to go about this scene would have been to have the heroine convey her inner feelings to the audience by her facial expression. I'm against that. In real life, people's faces don't reveal what they think or feel. As a film director I must try to convey this woman's frame of mind to the audience by purely cinematic means.

"When the camera is on Verloc, it pans to the knife and then back again to his face. And we realize that he, too, has seen the knife and has suddenly become aware of what it may mean to him. Now the suspense between the two protagonists has been established, and the knife lies there, between them.

"Thanks to the camera, the public is now actually living the scene, and if that camera should suddenly become distant and objective, the tension that's been created would be destroyed. Verloc stands up and walks around the table, moving straight toward the camera, so that the spectator in the theater gets the feeling that he must recoil to make way for him. Instinctively, the viewer should be pushing back in his seat to allow Verloc to pass by. Afterward, the camera glides back toward Sylvia Sidney, and then it focuses once more on the central object, that knife. And the scene culminates, as you know, with the killing.

"F.T. The entire scene is utterly convincing! Someone else might have ruined the whole thing merely by changing the angles when Verloc rises to his feet, and placing the camera at the back of the room for a full shot before going back to the close shot. The slightest mistake, like the sharp pulling back of the camera, would dissipate all of that tension.

"A.H. That would ruin the whole scene. Our primary function is to create an emotion and our second job is to sustain that emotion.

"When a film has been properly staged, it isn't necessary to rely upon the player's virtuosity or personality for tension and dramatic effects. In my opinion, the chief requisite for an actor is the ability to do nothing well, which is by no means as easy as it sounds. He should be willing to be utilized and wholly integrated into the picture by the director and the camera. He must allow the camera to determine the proper emphasis and the most effective dramatic highlights."