Saboteur (1942)

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock; produced by Frank Lloyd

When a fire destroys an aircraft-manufacturing plant and kills a man, a young worker (Robert Cummings) is fingered as the suspect. He knows who was to blame, but the real culprit (Norman Lloyd) cannot be traced. Thinking his only chance is to clear his own name, the would-be scapegoat embarks on an adventure that involves a pretty girl (Priscilla Lane), several accomplices, numerous villains and a hair-raising fight atop a world-famous monument.

Hitchcock directed several movies involving a falsely accused man on the run. They usually contained similar elements (eg. an initially unwilling female companion, secret villains, an exciting climax) and varied in their quality. From Young and Innocent to Frenzy, the best are probably The 39 Steps and North by Northwest. These two had as outstanding characteristics a dry sense of humour (which wasn’t out of place) and a likeable leading man who could work both comedy and drama. Saboteur does not have these.

Robert Cummings was certainly a good actor, but he is, perhaps, miscast here. There is something missing in his performance that would otherwise involve the viewer in his cause. In an attempt to find an actor who could effectively portray an ordinary man, the casting director may have found someone too ordinary. Lane was good in light drama and light comedy, and should have been an effective foil for the hero. The casting in her case is not at fault, but rather the screenplay.

The script is not what I would call focused. The dialogue is not particularly sharp, and there are too many questions the viewer will have. At one point, Cummings is held prisoner in a storeroom in a house’s basement. He starts the fire-alarms ringing by lighting a fire. There is confusion among the household staff and the next time we see Cummings, he is out in the street across from the house. We haven’t a clue as to how he escaped, why the confusion helped him or even if it did.

In a previous scene, we find that Lane has been transported by the villains from California to New York; why, we aren’t told. Why was she not held captive in the west – or simply killed – rather than running the risk of bringing her three thousand miles across country? An enemy hide-out is discovered in an abandoned mining town; it’s sole purpose is, apparently, to enable the villains to view a dam – a prospective sabotage target - through a telescope; for what purpose?

For all its faults, Saboteur has enough good qualities to recommend it as an entertaining, if very undemanding evening at the movies. The subsidiary characters are very good. Otto Kruger is annoyingly superior as the chief villain – and really, if you want your villains to be hated and remembered, don’t make them vicious or sadistic, make them annoying. There is a good scene in which he explains his motivation; he is viewed seated in the middle distance, as if the notion of proximity to an inferior is repulsive to him. A circus troupe provides additional interest, debating whether to help the fugitive, though one suspects that their accumulated talent as performers doesn’t bring the circus much revenue. Indeed, it is Cummings’s unexpected accomplices who are the movie’s most watchable characters, including Murray Alper as a truck-driver who helps Cummings mainly from boredom. (Look quick for a very young Tony Randall as a cameraman.)

The direction is, as may be hoped, very good. The scene in which Cummings tries to cut his handcuffs on a car engine’s fan-belt before being caught is tense, as is the shoot-out in a cinema, the movie being shown reflecting to an extent the chase going on literally behind the scenes.

While there are many flaws in Saboteur, which some have termed Hitchcock’s American The 39 Steps, it is still a reasonably enjoyable film. Just don’t ask too many questions, such as ‘Why isn’t this better?’