Word: hitchcock
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Appointed: Polo's famed Major Tommy Hitchcock, as assistant military attaché for air, in London...
Saboteur (Frank Lloyd; Universal) is one hour and 45 minutes of almost simon-pure melodrama from the hand of the master: bejowled, Buddha-ball Director Alfred Hitchcock (The 39 Steps, The Lady Vanishes, Rebecca, etc.), whose guileless countenance and cherubic demeanor mask a talent for scaring hell out of cinema audiences...
Saboteur's ingredients are not uncommon, but Master Hitchcock deals them out in a sinister manner that makes them appear so. The story is concerned with the efforts of a Pacific Coast aircraft-factory mechanic (Robert Cummings) to track down the man (Norman Lloyd) who set fire to the plant. That is not easy, for Cummings himself is mistakenly wanted by the police as the saboteur...
...melodramatic journey from coast to coast shows Hitchcock at his best. It gives movement, distance and a terrifying casualness to his painful suspense. It leads the hero to the palatial Nevada ranch of the master saboteur (Otto Kruger), into the hands of the police, out of them to an abandoned desert mining town loaded with paraphernalia to blow up Boulder Dam, on to Manhattan and an ironic denouement. The Girl (Priscilla Lane), of course, is picked up en route...
...Hitchcock, who admits to a liking for murder amid babbling brooks, steps up the excitement of his picture by deftly under stating his saboteurs' characters. One (Alan Baxter), a nice chap who might be an accountant, amiably discusses his children and their future with Cummings, who has passed himself off as a ring member...