dierregi

Not to be confused with Saboteur, Hitchcock's Sabotage is smaller, darker, and crueller. Mrs. Verloc runs a cinema with her shady husband and cares for her little brother Stevie, blissfully unaware that her husband moonlights as a bomber.

Scotland Yard has him under watch through undercover Sgt. Spencer, the shop assistant next door.

The film's great shock comes when Verloc, fearing exposure, sends Stevie to deliver a bomb. The boy dawdles, the tension stretches unbearably, and the bus explodes - one of Hitchcock's most audaciously grim sequences.

What follows is domestic horror: Mrs. Verloc's grief, the grotesque banality of her husband's reaction, and the unbearable contrast of a silly cartoon playing in the theater below.

The climax is pure Hitchcock irony: carving a roast turns into murder, "accidentally" ridding Mrs. Verloc of her husband. A fire conveniently wipes away the evidence, leaving her free to imagine a future with Spencer.

Sabotage may lack the polish of his later thrillers, but its cruelty is unforgettable.

Saboteur is Hitchcock rehearsing themes he would later refine in North by Northwest and Notorious: the wrong man on the run, the uneasy alliance with a woman who doesn't entirely trust him, and the discovery that evil often wears tuxedos.

Barry, accused of sabotage and murder, flees across America with reluctant companion Pat, uncovering not just shadowy agents but the complicity of polite society.

It's not subtle, culminating in the Statue of Liberty climax where symbolism hangs as heavily as Barry's dangling hand, but it's effective. A brisk thriller, full of Hitchcock's knack for suspense in ordinary spaces, and an early sketch for masterpieces to come.

Aldo, Giovanni e Giacomo once built their careers on quick-fire, silly, lightweight, occasionally brilliant sketches. Like Benigni, they couldn't resist the lure of cinema, and against all odds, their early films worked, despite wafer-thin plots and the not-so-subtle choice of always playing "Aldo, Giovanni, and Giacomo."

Fast-forward to Odio l'estate, a late attempt to stitch comedy to "real life." The premise: three families mistakenly book the same seaside villa. Cue a string of limp sketches, teenage crushes, and bickering over deck chairs.

The "twist" arrives when Aldo, the lazy hypochondriac, turns out not to be faking - or is he?

The film wants both laughter and tears, but manages neither.

Sun, sand, and mortality, yet all that remains is a beige aftertaste.