Word: hitchcock
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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...
There is no single scene to equal that of the death of the Dutch diplomat in "Foreign Correspondent," but there are many episodes with genuine genius behind them. Characterization is the forte of this film; no other Hitchcock picture has had such well-drawn dramatis personae. Of course, the hero and heroine are fairly one-dimensional; Robert Cummings is allowed to swagger a bit as Barry Keane, but Priscilla Lane, although skillfully directed to cover up her deficiencies, is bad. The emphasis of the picture rests on the fifth columnists; a trio of them, Otto Kruger, Alan Baxter, and especially...