Um Barco e Nove Destinos

For some reason, "Lifeboat" has remained a relatively obscure and overlooked Hitchcock film. True, the pace is nothing like a North By Northwest or Rear Window, but the level of drama provided is as high as any of Hitchcock's films, early or late. The scene where the mother wakes up in Tallulah's fur coat and asks where her little Johnny is was one of the most gut wrenching scenes I've ever seen in a movie, and I've seen plenty of movies. The movie, while wonderfully developing its own nine characters, also raises questions aimed at the viewer, pointedly questioning how each one of us would react in those certain situations. Personally, I thought the movie was another Hitchcock masterpiece, and I would definitely give it four out of four stars.

In one of Alfred Hitchcock's earliest films, six people with different personalities and backgrounds are stranded together in a lifeboat after the passenger-carrying freighter they are on is sunk by a German u-boat in the Mid-Atlantic. The cast includes the fabulous Tallulah Bankhead as a bitchy photo-journalist, Hume Cronyn as kind-hearted man who finds love on the lifeboat, Canada Lee as a kind steward, Walter Slezak as a mysterious German, and John Hodiak who has to dodge Tallulah's nonstop advances. Hitchcock did this film on one set - the single lifeboat. What's amazing is that he could keep things interesting for two hours, but he managed to somehow. Bankhead is this movie's greatest asset. Reportedly, she didn't wear underwear on the set and constantly kept the crew at attention! This is a great, novel film.

"Lifeboat" is an excellent film. It is a great achievement by Alfred Hitchcock that he could create a film set on only a lifeboat interesting for its duration. Hitchcock had a knack for experimental films, such as "Rope", which seems to be one continuous shot, and "Rear Window", which features one small apartment and a man in a wheel chair. With so little, he is always able to do so much.

In "Lifeboat", we start out with the sinking of a ship and people gathering on the lifeboat. It's really that simple. This is a character driven film. There are no lush chase sequences, there are no gunfights, there is no mystery. Nope, its all about how this collection of characters interact with each other. Its a study of how difference of opinion can creat tensions, and how people can deal with those tensions. Its really fascinating to watch, and when its all said and done, you get the impression that it wasn't just an experiment, but that it had something to say, and it did.

The only slight flaw in the film is that we don't really get a sense of how long(exactly)they've been at sea. I "Cast Away" we saw Tom Hanks lost a considerable amount of weight and grow a considerable amount of hair. Well, that is the one thing you don't see with this movie. Its really a minor quibble anyway because it doesn't diminish the entertainment value at all.

Hitchcock was the master of suspense, but he was never afraid to try other things, from screwball comedy(Mr. and Mrs.Smith) to psychological thrillers(Vertigo). This film is definitely one of his best and most interesting experiments. 9 out of 10.

During the years of World War Two, Hollywood production followed the necessities of morale and propaganda, but tended towards movies that were minimalist and stripped down. Due to the conflict available resources were even lower than the cash-strapped days of the depression, and crews were smaller as many studio employees joined the armed forces. As far as the quality of the pictures produced is concerned, it wasn't always a bad thing. With fewer elements, filmmakers were encouraged towards inventiveness, as well as a more personal focus.

In the case of Lifeboat, it lead to the first in a series of pictures directed by Alfred Hitchcock made entirely in one confined set. Four years later he would make one called Rope, which gave the illusion of being shot in one continuous take. As such there was a constant feel of the artificiality of the process as the director's self-imposed limitations forced him to change angle and focus by moving the camera around. Lifeboat is different, not because Hitch didn't have the level of technical expertise yet, but because it has a far more timely and important story, and he could not afford to turn it into some self-indulgent technical exercise.

What we actually have is Hitch at his most thoughtful and least extravagant. Rather than drawing our attention to the smallness of the space, he makes the drama revolve entirely around the characters. His shot compositions are mostly designed to show only the actors, not the boat. This isn't just done with close-ups, but many cleverly arranged group shots. In acknowledgement of just how much the human brain can take in at once, he might have one character talking, while several others stand around them, not as bits of scenery but as part of the narrative. A good example is Walter Slezak, whom Hitch will place in some innocuous part of the shot, only to have the actor turn his head at some key moment while someone else is speaking, making us suddenly remember him and wonder if perhaps he is listening. While Hitch generally let actors get on with their own job, I am sure such precisely timed and presented bits of business were at his behest.

This is not to say the actors in Lifeboat are mere puppets for the director. Slezak is in fact a brilliant performer, intelligently displaying an air of innocence, with now and then a touch of something deeper. His manner is genuinely ambiguous, which makes it believable for the other characters to be divided in their opinion of him. Tallulah Bankhead seems more or less to be playing herself, or at least the delightfully vibrant persona that she crafted for herself. On dry land she could easily come across as a bit of a fraud, but here in the Lifeboat she personifies the spirit of defiance in the face of it all. From the rest of the cast come solid turns which are distinctive and lively, but never quite going so far as stereotype or overstatement.

The end result is not the most conventional piece of wartime propaganda ever. But while not exactly rousing, it is certainly entertaining. And this is what is best about Hitchcock – when he wasn't busy being a technical show-off, he always kept his mind on thrilling and enthralling the audience. A director who plays TO an audience, pandering to a specific set of sensibilities, will make films that will only ever appeal to the tastes of one era. Hitch on the other hand plays WITH the audience, and this has made his pictures stand the test of time.

Lifeboat, the Hitchcock classic, defines the essence of the American super will in 1944. It pits the American melting pot irrationality and eccentricities against the single-minded rational Teutonic mind. Unlike the typical propaganda movies of its time, Lifeboat does not march without a reverse gear across the screen like John Wayne's boots. Lifeboat is circumspect, and asks profound questions about war, and values, and vulnerability. It second guesses itself. It wonders.

A freighter is sunk by a German U-boat and the cast assembles in a solitary lifeboat on a cold gray Atlantic Ocean for a two hour emotional roller-coaster. 60 years ago, before there were true female heavyweight actresses like Brittany Spears or Meg Ryan, there was Tallulah Bankhead, a thinking man's dame with an Alabama drawl and no underwear. Apparently she wanted to keep the attention of the camera crew during filming; mission accomplished. Playing the lead role of Constance Porter, Tallulah was in her element as the clawed feisty sharp talking journalist ripping apart at will anyone that crossed her path especially alpha male want a be, John Kovac, played by John Hodiak. Ruggedly ugly, Hodiak, played an impulsive hotheaded boiler room brute that acted first and used thought only as a last resort. His persona was that of a man raised on the wrong side of the tracks, vigilant like a stray dog with the hair up on its back most of the time.

Then there was Willy. Willy, played magnificently by Walter Slezak, was a rescued German U-boat sailor, ultimately unmasked as the Captain of the U-boat that sunk the freighter. Willy spoke perfect English. He knew the sea, navigation and knew how to survive. He was superior in intellect, physical strength, and cunning. Not only was he capable of saving Gus Smith's life by a surgical amputation of his leg, he also pushed Gus overboard when it was clear that Gus, played by William Bendix was dying and essentially wasting the survival resources of the others in the boat.

Other characters providing color included a young Hume Cronyn, hard to believe he was ever young, and famous cigar chewing character actor grouch, Charles Rittenhouse who played Henry Hull, ironically, a shipping tycoon. Other players had various levels of incompetence and mental instability.

What does this movie say? It says that Americans can only stand so much rational logic before they explode, even if the rational logic initially saves their lives. It frames the basis of ethical reasoning. For example who do you give a heart transplant to, a scientist or a street person who waltzes into the door two seconds before the scientist? Willy would give the heart to the scientist because he weighs the society above the individual, and the rest of the boat would give it to the street person, not because it is rational but because they base ethics on human equality, and seek to find some measure of 'fairness' as the basis of ethical decision making. While American society may tout the virtues of this kind of sentiment, they are not really that comfortable with it. Watching a street person with a newly transplanted heart swill down a bottle of Thunderbird wine is not particularly gratifying when at the same time the Nobel Laureate is being laid to rest, perhaps just short of a discovery that could have saved millions of lives. And this is precisely what the movie does in the end. It leaves us uncertain about our own brutality in the name of our version of ethical fairness. It also makes us question our own sense of reason and logic. What possible virtue is there in a society that shuns reasoning? This is the point that Hitchcock makes so cleverly. He leaves us with a sense of fear, from both a tough intelligent rational enemy, but also from a wild brutish killing wrought out of self-fear and ending with an uncomfortable lynch mob sense of justice. This was not a killing of self-defense; it was a killing of berserk passion and loss of control. These were after all, not soldiers, but they were us, suffering from a global war with no end in sight. Frustrated by a relentless predatory machine-like enemy, that could torpedo unarmed freighters, yet smile and tell jokes while rowing toward an enemy rescue ship.

Lifeboat is a movie of huge depth. If the brain aspects of the movie don't appeal to you, you may want to see the movie just to get a glimpse of Tallulah so you could actually see what a real woman once looked like before they became extinct in the sea of 18 year old tattooed tongue-pierced pop culture nothings and crack smoking 'super-models' that masquerade these days as 'American womanhood'. And you wonder why men don't want to marry anymore.