Sabotage - Alfred Hitchcock

The last movie we saw from Hitchcock was Secret Agent, yet the film Sabotage is based on The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad. The film opens with a shot of London at night, all the lights shining, activity. This image is intercut with an image of a single light bulb. We go back to London, then back to the bulb and the bulb starts to flicker, and go out. We are then shown London with all the lights going out. A power outage, which is found out to be due to an act of sabotage. The main suspect is Mr. Verloc, the owner of a cinema. In fact he isn't even a suspect to the audience because we watch him get home to the cinema, walk through the theatre space to a curtain at the back which is the home he shares with his wife and his child brother-in-law Stevie. We then see Karl Verloc (played by Oskar Homolka) wash his hands, and see the same sand coming off his hands that the detectives found in the pipes that caused the power outage. Mrs. Verloc (played by Sylvia Sidney), and Stevie (played by Desmond Tester) have no idea what Verloc has been up to. From an audience perspective, everything is laid out from the start. The tension and thrill is trying to figure out what may be sabotaged next, how, and if Verloc will get caught. Luckily there is a produce stand next to the cinema and someone there seems very interested in the comings and goings at the cinema. 

I think this film is very good. There are some really fantastic visuals - one being Verloc and his "boss" meeting in an aquarium, talking and plotting about the next hit. After the boss leaves, Verloc somewhat stares at one of the tanks. The visual switches to the tank, and the fish swimming in it. This changes into a London cityscape which eventually swirls and melts back into the fish tank. There is also a fantastic sequence where Stevie is given a package that needs to be delivered to a specific place by 1:30. He is told to not be late, and the audience assumes that this package contains a bomb set to explode at 1:45. Stevie is also carrying two cans of film and so can not use public transport because of how flammable film was at that time. Tension builds as we keep seeing Stevie get delayed, or distracted intercut with shots of clocks. He finally gets on a bus with the promise to be very careful with the film, and the tension continues to build through the intercutting of clocks and the audience watching the time get closer to 1:45. There is even some overlapping images of a mechanism, and time passing. The music builds as with every stop the bus makes, Hitchcock shows a clock. I won't give away much else.

There are some comic moments to the film, as well as your Hitchcockian romance. There is also plenty of writing about this film that provides further insight into the style - but also gives away much more of the plot. Donald Spoto's The Art of Alfred Hitchcock is a great place to start if you want more insight. My goal here is to entice you, the reader, to give some of these films a watch. This film did not do as well with the critics due to a mistake in the story that Hitchcock made. I will let you figure out what that is on your own. There is no cameo, and I watched this film as part of the Alfred Hitchcock Premiere Collection. This collection includes commentary with film historian Leonard Leff, an interview between Peter Bogdanovich and Hitchcock, as well as restoration comparison.  While this box set now looks to be out of print, I'm certain you will be able to find this film.