Sabotatori

This is a thrilling Hitch movie about a high-class rebellious group plotting to blow up major factories , installations , dams and ships . A factory worker ( Robert Cummings ) wrongfully framed of sabotage at a munitions plant set off on pursuit the traitor ( Norman Lloyd still today acting ) who accused him . He is forced to take on the lam and attempts to elude police while tries to find the real culprit . Our hero flees from the web of circumstance evidence threatening to entrap him . At the beginning a gorgeous model ( Priscilla Lane ) suspects Cummings might be the terrorist planting bombs around factories , but later on , being helped by the personable heroine until a groundbreaking climax finale .

Top-notch and top form Hitchcock movie about a WWII worker turned fugitive who tries to unmask the true saboteur . This exciting story is briskly paced and has a brooding , doom-laden atmosphere , including habitual crop of memorable sequences . Hitch uses impressive locations as Boulder Dam , Radio City Music Hall and the Statue of Liberty to intensify the suspense . Some overwhelming set pieces and breathtaking ending on the Statue of Liberty with incredible special effects by the craftsman John P Fulton who has a long career as FX designer . It contains usual Hitch touches constantly boost the action . Interesting screenplay by Joan Harrison -Hitchcock's usual- , Dorothy Parker and Peter Viertel , Deborah Kerr's husband . Atmospheric cinematography in white and black by Joseph Valentine and suspenseful musical score by the classic Frank Skinner . The picture bears certain remembrance to ¨Sabotage(1936)¨ with Silvia Sidney and Oscar Homolka who Hitchcock directed during his first British period . The story deals with ordinary Hitchcock theme as ¨ Wrong guilty¨ such as ¨ Thirty nine steps¨ , ¨Foreign correspondent¨ , ¨Wrong man¨ , ¨North by Northwest¨ and ¨To catch a thief¨ . Rating : Above average for its numerous quirky touches of the Master of suspense and beginning and finishing memorably . Worthwhile watching and indispensable and essential seeing for Hitchcock fans .

Saboteur doesn't get the attention it deserves for one major reason. Hitchcock wanted Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck. Imagine what a "big" film it would have been perceived as with them as the stars.

Instead, he got Robert Cummings and Priscilla Lane, both very good, but signalling that somehow this wasn't a major motion picture.

Saboteur has all the Hitchcock elements, some reminiscent of the 39 Steps - the wrong man accused and on the run, a blonde, handcuffs, and pre-North by Northwest, a scene at a landmark, with similar action taking place.

The story concerns a worker, Barry Kane (Cummings) accused of setting fire to a munitions factory and killing his best friend. In fact, Kane saw the terrorist - a man named Frye, who posed as an employee. He sets out to clear his name.

There are some interesting scenes and colorful characters, and the end is exciting - also a bit abrupt, as if Hitchcock ran out of money. Still very enjoyable and worth seeing.

Alfred Hitchcock's Saboteur is not one of his best-regarded films; made between two vastly more popular and critically praised pictures, Suspicion and Shadow Of a Doubt, it's generally regarded as a lesser effort. I agree that the later film is groundbreaking, drawing Hitchcock wholly into the American mainstream for the first time, but Saboteur is in its way at least as lively as Suspicion; its chief flaw being its less than charismatic star players, Bob Cummings and Priscilla Lane.

In Saboteur we find Hitchcock feeling his way around America, literally, as its lead character travels from California to New York in search of an arsonist for whose crime he was accused. Cummings is very youthful here, and quite engaging. His boyishness (but not immaturity) perfectly suits the character he is portraying, and seems appropriate, as the director, though middle-aged, was in the process of reinventing himself, and an older, more established star might have thrown things off. Priscilla Lane's spunky heroine, which not a typical type for the director, was very much a common type in American films at the time; and she and Cummings provide an openness and a youth the director needed both in his life and work at this time. I cannot imagine older, more solid types,--Cooper and Stanwyck for instance--doing any better, as they would have, between them, carried, well, too much baggage.

As is the norm in Hitchcock's films, nothing is as it appears. Where Saboteur differs from his better known films is that the audience is let in on the game early. Though Cummings is an accused arsonist, we know that he is innocent. The villains become apparent fairly soon; and the movie hinges more on its plot than its ironies. What pleasures there are are incidental, and here the Master does not disappoint. There is an interesting, Tod Browningish interlude with some circus freaks, who help Cummings elude capture. In another scene, reminiscent of James Whale's Bride of Frankenstein, Cummings spends some time in the cottage of a blind man, who, as it turns out, is Lane's uncle. Was the director perhaps studying key American films of the previous decade? Whatever the case, these and other offbeat and discursive aspects of the movie give it a playfulness and variety, which, when one adds the factor of quite youthful leads, makes the picture seem like the work of a younger man, still learning his craft.

The film's later scenes, in New York, are more suspenseful and typical of the director, as the picture gradually becomes more Hitchockian as it moves along. In the end I find it a satisfying work; and as neither Cummings nor Lane has a dark side as an actor, neither does the movie have one. It is deliberately lightweight, and I suspect semi-experimental; an attempt by Hitchcock to see if he could pull off, in an American setting, the sort of story he had done so well in England. He succeeded admirably. The next logical step: Shadow Of a Doubt, a film in which the main character travels east to west, and with a wholly different set of values and plans.

Hitchcock made at least 11 films about the ordinary man, wrongly accused, on the run (sometimes really running, sometimes not) to prove his innocence in a situation beyond his control, the first one being "The 39 Steps", which really made him popular in Great Britain. It really is his signature theme.

Others include "Young and Innocent", "Saboteur", "Spellbound", "Stage Fright", "Strangers on a Train", "I Confess", "To Catch a Thief", "The Wrong Man", "North by Northwest", and finally "Frenzy". "Saboteur" starts Robert Cummings as Barry Kane, a wartime aircraft plant worker during wartime accused of murdering his co-worker and best friend during an act of sabotage on the plant. He meets up with model Patricia Martin, played by actress Priscilla Lane, during his run from the law, and later, of course, the various Nazi/Fascist sympathizers along the way.

"Saboteur" is mainly like "The 39 Steps", even including similar plot devices such as handcuffs, the blonde who doesn't trust the main character in the beginning, a race across the country (in one case London to Scotland, and in the other California to New York), and meeting the "colorful" locals along the way. And so, just like "The Man Who Knew Too Much", I believe this is an American remake of one of Hitchcock's earlier works.

I think Robert Cummings was chosen because he comes across as a very ordinary American, sort of an "everyman" with whom the audience can identify. I like Priscilla Lane because her character is a more involved in the action than Madeline Carroll in "The 39 Steps" and Ruth Roman in "Strangers on a Train". As mentioned elsewhere, though, Otto Kruger steals the show as the villain. I also liked Vaughan Glaser's performance as the blind uncle; his lines are great. There are some funny touches all along the way for some comic relief, such as road signs featuring Priscilla Lane's character on them, and circus sideshow performers, and the truck driver, Murray Alper. Contrary to other opinions here, there aren't too many characters who believe Barry Kane's innocence immediately.

There are some slow parts, mainly when the action first moves to New York, but it picks up quickly when the last planned act of the fifth columnists gets underway.

It's one of my favorite films from Hitchcock (I put it in my top 5), especially in these days of the new war on terrorism. I think it hits home.

It makes you think, "Could my coworker be involved in something evil?" In fact, one of the movie posters for "Saboteur" proclaimed "Watch Out for the Man behind your back!" Imagine how that played in the mind of adults during the Second World War.

'Saboteur' isn't one of Hitchcock's best known movies but it shouldn't be completely dismissed for that reason. It's a very entertaining "innocent man on the run" thriller, a theme he had previously used to great success in 'The 39 Steps', and would later recycle in one of his most popular movies 'North By Northwest' (and one which still gets used time and time again by Hollywood - see 'The Fugitive', 'Enemy Of The State', 'Minority Report' and countless others). Some people slam Robert Cummings (who later appeared in Hitchcock's 'Dial M For Murder') as being a bit lightweight, but I think he's actually pretty good as a leading man, and Priscilla Lane ('Arsenic And Old Lace') is also not bad, and the two do show some on screen chemistry. Of course with more charismatic leads 'Saboteur' would have been greatly improved, but as it is it's good enough. One actor in the cast I think is really terrific is Otto Kruger ('Murder, My Sweet') who plays Tobin, one of Hitchcock's best ever villains. 'Saboteur' is action packed and keeps things interesting. There's a good sequence with a traveling circus, memorable bit parts from a truck driver and a blind man, and the climax is great stuff and vintage Hitch. If you are new to Hitchcock I could name at least a dozen of his movies to watch before this one, but if you've seen his "greatest hits" try 'Saboteur', it's lots of fun.