Lifeboat (1944)




GenresThriller War
Director Alfred Hitchcock
Writers John Steinbeck (story)
Director of Photography Glen MacWilliams

Review
Penetrating revelations about shipwreck survivors adrift in lonely lifeboat during WW2. Bankhead remarkable as spoiled rich girl, Slezak fine as Nazi taken aboard. Only Hitchcock would take on the challenge of such a film and succeed. Jo Swerling adapted John Steinbeck's original story.



There is a certain terror that inevitably results from being with people whose motivations are not yet known. Lifeboat is Alfred Hitchcock's interpretation of the matter, based on a John Steinbeck play. Lifeboat is set during World War II, and when a sea battle between Allies and Axis ships leaves only a few survivors, they all end up on one lifeboat. The apparent wild card is a German, played by Walter Slezak. The rest of the boat, a mix of Brits and Americans, are torn, with several in favor of returning the atrocities visited upon their relatives and countrymen and the rest arguing for decent treatment of a prisoner of war. The movie was released in January of 1944, a solid fifteen months before the end of the war, and it reflects the anti- German bias that permeated both England and the United States. I wasn't thinking in terms of the war when watching the movie fifty- five years later, and I actually thought for a moment that the German might turn out to be an OK guy. Hitchcock, though, that marvel of visual subtext, demonstrated otherwise with a cleverly done shadow.

Of the boat's occupants, Tallulah Bankhead is probably my favorite. Her brand of sass is exactly what I expect of women in movies from that period. I'm even willing to forgive the times when her hair looks salon-fresh even though she's been without cosmetic supplies for a few days. Henry Hull is enjoyable as the magnate who goes from being the most civilized to the least.









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