In 1943, Hitchcock directed the WWII melodrama, “Lifeboat”, starring the great stage actress Tallulah Bankhead in her best-known screen role.
Grade: C+ (**1/2 out of *****)
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Theatrical release poster
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Though approaching WWII from a strange perspective that differed from most of Hollywood pictures of the era, “Lifeboat” is not one of Hitchcock’s strong films. Among others things, the film has the misfortune of being released after Hitchcock’s first American masterpiece, “Shadow of a Doubt.”
However, thematically, it is still pertinent, with some disturbing moments, and stylistically, the film is experimental due to the manipulation of restricted space.
The whole action was confined to a small lifeboat adrift on the Atlantic with a handful of survivors from a torpedoed freighter. Among them was the captain of the attacking U-boat, which was also sunk during the engagement.
Over the years, the literature on this film indicates divided response among critics, from those who dismiss it as silly and contrived to those who stress the technical properties, to those who single it out as a star vehicle for Bankhead. (Hitchcock himself was of two minds about “Lifeboat”)
Though Bankhead plays the major role, there’s no clear central figure, and “Lifeboat,” like Hitchcock’s late pictures (“Topaz,” “Family Plot””) is more of an ensemble piece.
The oddly assorted group of castaways is meant to represent a cross-section of Allied nationalities, different points of view, and personality types. They include a self-centered lady journalist (Tallulah Bankhead), a bewildered nurse (Mary Anderson), a shy radio operator (Hume Cronyn), a tough crew member of Czech ancestry (John Hodiak), a shipping magnate (Henry Hull), a crazed mother (Heather Angel) and her dead baby, a black steward (Canada Lee), and a wounded crewman (William Bendix).
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L–R: Walter Slezak, John Hodiak, Tallulah Bankhead, Henry Hull, William Bendix, Heather Angel, Mary Anderson, Canada Lee, and Hume Cronyn
The film was meat to be sort of a microcosm of the war.
Walter Slezak as Nazi
The Nazi is not a stock villain, as in most mainstream Hollywood movies, but a rather “charming” Hitchcockian villain-devil.
It was the character of the Nazi U-boat captain, excellently acted by Walter Slezak, who provided the most startling and controversial aspect of the picture. The Nazi was portrayed as the only stable, level-headed and practical member of the group. He was the only one among them who had a plan for survival amid the confusion and self-pity that marked his lifeboat companions. This was a disturbing factor to some critics, who were plainly alarmed at the implications. Hitchcock, however, said that he made the Nazi a strong character in order to indicate that the Nazis should not be underestimated by the Allies.
Critical and Commercial Appeal
Lifeboat was a box-office success in New York and other big cities, but not in Middle America, or elsewhere. Thus, overall it was a moderately commercial picture–by Hitchcock’s standards.
Hitchcock received an Academy Award nomination for best Director.
Tallulah Bankhead won the New York Film Critics Circle Best Actress Award.
Significantly, the only character who holds back from the mob violence and lynching is the black guy (well played by Canada Lee).
There are several disturbing scenes, in which the audience is encouraged to sympathize or empathize with the killers, but also feel embarrassed and ashamed by their feelings. The audience is left free to regard action from objective, detached viewpoint.
Hitchcock himself had said that Lifeboat was “a silly film from a crazy idea.”
(It is one of few Hitchcock films that I do not like, and do not wish to revisit).
Tallulah Bankhead, in a scene-stealing performance, overacts and she unintentionally underlines the picture’s limitations, steering it in several scenes into camp. Fans of the star, better known for her stage work, see it as a self-mocking grandiloquence.
The Canadian critic Robin Wood has singled out the film’s subversive critique of capitalism, drawing parallels between the Nazi captain and the American self-made millionaire.
Inadvertently, Lifeboat suggests that fascism is an extension rather than the opposite of capitalist democracy.
Much has been made of the technical tour de force of shooting virtually a whole film in a restricted space — but the real tour de force is in the continuous shifting of the viewers’ identification positions, from scene to scene and sometimes n within a single shot.
Facts, Queries, Oddities
William Yetter Jr. appeared on screen in speaking role as the German sailor, but he was not listed in the credits.
Bankhead had not appeared in a film since Faithless in 1932; she did a lot of stage work. She was paid the estimable amount of $75,000 for her work in Lifeboat.
Viewers never see how Constance did get on the boat in the first place; she is already there when the story begins
Throughout, she is wearing a mink coat; just like Melanie Daniels in the first part of The Birds, in 1963
Constance lights up two cigarettes, one for her and one for Kovac.
Strong scene: Kovac throwing her camera into the water, right after her long monologue about the “priceless photographs.”
Credits
20th Century-Fox.
Produced by Kenneth Macgowan.
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
Screenplay by Jo Swerling, based on a story by John Steinbeck.
Camera: Glen MacWilliams
Special Effects: Fred Sersen
Sets: James Basevi and Maurice Hansford
Music: Hugo Friedhofer, directed by Emil Newman
Costumes: Rene Hubert
Editing: Dorothy Spencer
Release date: January 12, 1944
Cast:
Constance “Connie” Porter (Tallulah Bankhead)
Gus (William Bendix)
Willy (Walter Slezak)
Alice MacKenzie (Mary Anderson)
Kovac (John Hodiak)
Charles Rittenhouse (Henry Hull)
Mrs. Higgins (Heather Angel)
Stanley Garrett (Hume Cronyn)
George “Joe” Spencer (Canada Lee)
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