Lifeboat

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Lifeboat

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Part mystery, part wartime polemic, Lifeboat finds director Alfred Hitchcock tackling a cinematic challenge that foreshadows the self-imposed handicaps of Rope and Rear Window. As with those subsequent features, Hitchcock confines his action and characters to a single set, in this instance the lone surviving lifeboat from an Allied freighter sunk by a German U-boat in the North Atlantic. A less confident, ingenious filmmaker might have opened up John Steinbeck's dialogue-driven character study beyond the battered boat and its cargo of survivors, but Hitchcock instead revels in his predicament to exploit the enforced intimacy between his characters.

Indeed, we never actually see the doomed freighter--the smoking ship's funnel beneath the credits simply sinks beneath the waves, and we're plunged into the escalating tensions between those who gradually find their way to the boat, a band of eight English and American passengers and crew, plus a German sailor (Walter Slezak) rescued from the U-boat, itself destroyed by the freighter's deck gun. Heading the cast and inevitably commanding their and our attention is the cello-voiced Tallulah Bankhead as Connie Porter, a cynical, sophisticated writer whose priorities seem to be hanging onto her mink and keeping her lipstick fresh. Gradually, the others find Porter and her lifeboat, forming a temporary community that inevitably suggests a careful cross section of archetypes, from wealthy industrialist (Henry Hull) to ship's boiler men (John Hodiak and William Bendix).

Hitchcock juggles the interpersonal skirmishes between the boat's occupants with the mystery of their German prisoner, which itself becomes a meditation on the fine line between nationalism and morality, a line that Slezak walks delicately until his identity is resolved. Visually, Hitchcock transforms his back-lot set and its rear-projected cloudbanks into a desolate stretch of ocean, while capturing the horror of an amputation through an economical set of images culminating in an empty boot. --Sam Sutherland

Customer Reviews:

Rating:
Date: 2008-06-21
lifeboat
This is a time less classic. What a great movie! They don't make them like this any more

Rating:
Date: 2008-06-15
Standing Room Only
I'd never heard of this movie until it was mentioned in a 2003 New York Times obituary about Elizabeth Fowler, who spent 10 days in a 26' lifeboat with 35 men after their ship was sunk in the Atlantic by a German U-boat in 1942, and then wrote a book about it; the book was called "Standing Room Only." Hitchcock's movie gave me a better idea of how small such a boat would be---and there are only _8_ people in Hitchcock's lifeboat, not 36!---and it was intriguing to watch the survivors become a community, judging by concensus what was acceptable behavior and what was not, with the stronger personalities leading and the others following. One thing Fowler mentioned at the end of her book was how the survivors became strangers to each other almost immediately upon setting foot on dry land again; that sense of community was lost as soon as their lives returned to "normal." Interesting!

Rating:
Date: 2008-04-10
Underrated Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock's daring wartime drama rises to the technical challenge of being confined to a small set. Based on a story by John Steinbeck, "Lifeboat" (1944) remains among the director's most humanistic works with its emotional claustrophobia and incisive characterizations. Though a bit dialogue-heavy, the Master of Suspense creates a surprising amount of tension and intrigue throughout the film's 96-minute length. Tallulah Bankhead gives her finest screen performance, yet the entire cast is excellent. A minor classic in the Hitchcock canon.

Rating:
Date: 2008-03-29
The boatride of a lifetime
Hitch made great use of his directing skills with Lifeboat. The tension created when stuck on a boat and your life is in the hands of then enemy, twists of who to trust and where to go, all while the sun is baking you and evaporating every last drop of water out of your body. The rise and fall of the waves in this movie will keep you clinging to your life-jacket.

Rating:
Date: 2008-03-21
Interesting
It is not my favorite Alfred Hitchcock movie but is better than I thought that It would be. You are always trying to figure out who is good and who is bad. It keeps you guessing. I had never heard of it when I rented it but was not disappointed at all after seeing it.