Fifth Column

Fifth Column is an American film of Alfred Hitchcock left in 1942.

Synopsis

Barry Kane (Robert Cummings) working of aeronautics is judged, wrongly, culprit of an act of sabotage in his factory, sets fire to which causes the death of his/her best friend. To prove its innocence, it starts a race-continuation baited through the country with the research of the true saboteur…

Data sheet

Distribution

  • Robert Cummings: Barry Kane

  • Priscilla Lane : Patricia " Pat" Martin
  • Otto Kruger: Charles Tobin
  • Alan Baxter: Mr. Freeman
  • Clem Bevans: Neilson
  • Norman Lloyd : Frank Fry
  • Alma Kruger : Henrietta Sutton
  • Vaughan Glaser : Phillip Martin
  • Dorothy Peterson: Mandelevium. Mason
  • Ian Wolfe : Robert the man of house
  • Murray Alper: Mac, the truck-driver
  • Kathryn Adams: Mandelevium. Brown
  • Pedro de Cordoba: The man skeleton
  • Billy Curtis: “Major,” the dwarf
  • Marie LeDeaux: Tatania, the woman of weight
  • Anita Sharp-Bolster: Lorelei (Esmeralda)
  • Jean Romer: Marigold (Siamese)
  • Lynne Romer: Annette (Siamese)

Around film

  • Saboteur is the first American film of Hitchcock whose distribution is entirely American. The base of the scenario developed by Hitchcock even is considered to be him poor by Selznick which is released from the production. Consequently the realizer finds a freedom blocked in his preceding American tests, Selznic being a producer very interventionist.

  • the distribution of the main roles unfortunately escapes Hitchcock whose choice had been made on Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck.
  • Taking into account a tightened budget, Hitchcock and its chief decorator Robert Boyle (with whom Hitchcock begins long and profitable collaboration) find the need for using of all the fakings tested during the English period (intensive use of masks and models). In fact the film joins again with the singular charm of films of this period. One particularly thinks of the 39 steps whose this film borrows construction clearly. The most convincing demonstration of the control of its engineering team is the final memorable one on the Statue of freedom.
  • the film is moreover the framework of many experiments (distorts perspective, put in image of the final fall).
  • the production of film is disturbed by the entry in war of the United States. Certain plans must then be obtained with reels of files, the access to the places considered to be sensitive being prohibited. One of the most memorable plans of film is a plan stolen to the topicality, that of the steamer Normandy lying on the blank following one supposed sabotage. This contribution of opportunist and reactive Hitchcock is often proposed to discuss the founded good of the myth of “film builds the paper” maintained by the realizer.
  • the singular presence of the author Dorothy Parker, very marked on the left during a time when a blind patriotism is essential, must be noted because its very controlled contribution (many alternate scenes were turned or planned to be arranged later on with the censure) is significant. Its signature is perfectly perceptible in the scene of the truck driver or the speech of the blind hermit on the patriotic drifts and the duty to withdraw itself sometimes from the law.
  • the characterization of the traitors gives an account of the particular care perfectly that Hitchcock took to draw its “malicious” on which it largely made rest the success of its films. Once again it takes the opposite course to suitabilities by locating them in the higher classes, among these people whose uprightness and integrity are commonly allowed. This point is particularly supported in certain lines of dialogs which one can allot to Parker.
  • Hitchcock raised itself later that final suspense suffers heavily from an error of construction: it is the survival of the saboteur who is concerned. Error which it will not reproduce in the scene mirror of Death with the cases .
  • Film carried out during the least sumptuous period of the realizer who did not assert himself yet on the United States, the fifth column does not remain about it less one very important film for Hitchcock because of its commercial success in a difficult context (closed European market). First stage in the assertion of its singularity and its independence which it will concretize the following year with the same independent producer (the Skirball rabbi who releases the realizer of the influence of the studios). It is indeed with the Shade of a doubt , film very expensive in the middle of the scenario writer, that Hitchcock opens out finally as a `American realizer'.
  • If the very amusing film however is not essential like large Hitchcock, it falls about it undoubtedly on its couple of high-speed motorboats (couple imposed to the realizer, on which the studio misait then) which, if he demerit not, fails to bring to film the dimension of a film of prestige. Their radiation which will not exceed the American borders since is completely extinguished. Robert Cummings (which one will find in the crime was almost perfect ) will work much for television. The career of Priscilla Lane will turn very short.
  • Caméo : with the 60ème minute in a street of New York when the car of the saboteur stops.

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