Lifeboat

Synopsis

Last nine people find themselves on a lifeboat after the torpedoing of their steamer by a German submarine. Resulting from very different social environments, they make the experiment of a survival in community in fact. After the rescue of a shipwrecked man, the tensions appear…

Data sheet

original Title: Lifeboat
Realizer: Alfred Hitchcock
Scenario writers: John Steinbeck, OJ Swerling & Ben Hecht
Director of the photography: Glen MacWilliams
Decorations: Thomas Little
Artistic director: James Basevi, Maurice Ransford
Costumes: Rene Hubert
Music: Hugo Friedhofer
Assembly: Dorothy Spencer
Production: 20th Century Fox
Coming out date: January 12th 1944 (the USA)
Format: 1.33.4/3 (black & white)
Kind: Suspense
Lasted: 96 minutes

Distribution

Tallulah Bankhead : Constancy “Connie” To carry
William Bendix: Gus Smith
Walter Slezak: Willy
Mary Anderson : Alice MacKenzie
John Hodiak: John Kovac
Henry Hull: Charles D. “Ritt” Rittenhouse
Heather Angel: Mrs. Higgins
Hume Cronyn : Stanley “Sparks” Garrett
Canada Lee: George “Joe” Spencer

Around film

the realization of Lifeboat falls under a very particular context. Hitchcock which finally opened out as a realizer American after public successes of Fifth Column and critical of the Shade of a doubt (one of its greater personal satisfactions) sees entrusting the realization of a film of order, a propaganda film. Its contribution to the effort of war. The realizer had not awaited the requests of the commission of the navy American to approach this topicality (the world war and it assembled of the Nazism) in his cinema ( Corresponding 17 , Fifth Column ). But if the Fifth Column were évertuait to sensitize and alert the American citizen on the proliferation of Fascism and crawling Nazism, it kept its distances with a too exacerbated form of blind patriotism. The direction imposed for this project (attacks of convoys by the German submarines in North Atlantic) does not call this time Ci with an ambiguity treatment. The line is clear. The enemy is not any more one shade.
In final Hitchcock is confined finally of a film which of anything impersonal and is not expurgé of any form of complexity however paradoxical to the principles of effectiveness to which usually propaganda conforms. It is not certain that the realizer completely measured which point the use of some opposite courses (of which it was always greedy) “harm extremely fortunately” the legibility of the message.
the objective of Steinbeck which had been seen entrusting the writing of the first treatment, was of launching a call to the national unit, answer necessary vis-a-vis to the indivisible character of the enemy forces. The basic subject on the attacks of convoys is in fact as of the first treatment completely become additional. It is a question of leading the United States incarnated in its diversity by new representatives clearly typified towards the unit which must make its force.
On this basis, which is that of a psychological drama and by no means that of an action film, Hitchcock immediately imposes its mark, that of a realizer definitively very related to the form and the device. On the report that the treatment of a psychological film is illustrated particularly by the repeated use of closes-up, Hitchcock takes the option never not to leave the boat, transforming film into eight-close with open sky. In fact the realizer expurge the film of practically all the points of sights awaited (like that for example to translate the insulation of the boat in this vast ocean by broad plans). The enacted rule: the camera does not leave the boat. Valid point of view also for the treatment of the storm (one of the dynamic dramatic elements impossible to circumvent). One could note that the technical limitations which weighed on the cinema of the time led the realizers almost inevitably to illustrate of such scenes by a first role in average plan, firmly fixed on an element of the bridge and receiving, without separating his dignity, some water buckets in the face. But Hitchcock, frees that it was with the use of optical effects and models, could if it had had the intention of it, have taken up this challenge.
This party taken in the form been worth with the realizer a first reception criticizes very favorable, critical that ravisa abruptly, gangrenée by the doubt. Because the treatment as of these new individualities, and more than very other that of the Nazi, takes some intolerable freedoms in the context of the time.
the film puts in scene a Nazi scholar, cultivated, who proves, of the concerted opinion of nine American citizens (one is “unfortunately” in democracy and the support of the “enlightened” elements more grants the benefit of the doubt to him), the most capable being to bring back this small humanity to the drift to good port. In addition, it is incarnated by an actor (Walter Slezak) who lends sometimes his good-naturedness to him.
to finish film is not completely readable on a point however paramount which opens two quite divergent possible readings. Because if the Nazi is indisputably guilty of deception with regard to the group (the lesson which one at all should not give its confidence to the enemy must thus be retained), as well as crime, these acts can be charged to the principles of effectiveness and direction of the sacrifice, principles which if one sticks to some prejudices installed well, would characterize in a positive way the German people. Consequently the question can arise to know if this Nazi is not the only one to see that the interest of all converges unfortunately with his (namely that only the German positions can be joined). And that extremely of this lit conviction, measuring the incapacity of his “companions” of misfortunes to integrate such a proposal, it is constrained to act like it makes it with an effectiveness more than debatable. This version proposed to the spectator by the mouth of a Nazi manipulator and without states of heart (it finally proves to be the commander of the submarine which, with the “allowed” horror of the war, added that to draw on the lifeboats) is not verifiable. But the only fact that she is proposed raises the question.
It is certain that this possible interpretation did not even effleuré the studio. Criticisms on the other hand violently rejected this unsuitable characterization of the Nazi. Steinbeck will require that its name be withdrawn from the credits for same the reasons. The intentions of the realizer are not clear, but it shows through undoubtedly in its choices which it wanted not to be locked up in a reading strict and accepted by advance of all of this history.
Like almost always in the work of the realizer, the characterization of the whole of the protagonists is very neat. The characters certainly are very typified, but the feature is acceptable because it returns to this small group to incarnate America in its great diversity. Tallulah Bankhead which makes here a return noticed on the big screen, incarnates a colourful character, typically hitchcokien. Walter Slezak by his service honors the expensive principle with the realizer who wants that the success of a film strongly depends on that of the treatment of the malicious one. The friend Hume Cronyn brings to his character the obliteration, the uprightness and the simplicity which make “average” American.
the irony is very present in the dialogs. The reports/ratios of classes, subject well hithcockien, are proposed with corrosive. The “representative” of the minority black is authorized to be ironical when it is proposed to him, as if it were natural, to lend his voice for a democratic vote. This same character keeps away finally, and it is surely not a chance, when his/her companions devote themselves to lynching. The treatment of the scene is ambiguity besides, because the realizer places his camera, which it is true should not leave the boat, in retreat, representative this disordered state of violence like the work of a pack to the primary education and animal behavior. Ostentatious attribute of class of most debatable, the futile diamond bracelet is seen finally offered by Hichcock, like an ultimate thumb your nose, the occasion to repurchase itself by saving this sample of humanity to the drift. Occasion of the remainder missed.
One can note that, while at the same time the ramming of the lifeboats by the German submarine was proposed to translate the cruelty which animates the forces enemies, an inoffensive German boat undergoes (under heard not intentionally) the same fate as of the first allied shootings.
Ben Hecht (once again not credited) work with Hitchcock with the finalization of the script which will pass between several hands. If qualities of the head end of Steinbeck were never called into question by the realizer, it cruelly missed according to him this dramatic dynamics suitable to maintain the interest of the spectator.
In its design the film is singular on two points. In its pre-production the film was almost entirely scénarimagé, fact very rare at the time. Rarer still, benefitting from the decorations single, Hitchcock turned it strictly sequentially.
Caméo : a time considered, the traditional appearance of the realizer in the shape of his skin floating between two water was not finally retained (for the physical implications which resulted from this). Typically English humor which flirtait in the context with the bad taste. The realizer who followed a very strict mode then appears twice in photograph on a newspaper for the publicity of a slimming product (before/afterwards).

See too

Ebauche of analysis Extracts Appearance

Rewards

Tallulah Bankhead gained the New York Film Critics Circle Award of best the actress in 1944.

Respectively named for photography, the realization and the original screenplay, Glen MacWilliams, Alfred Hitchcock and John Steinbeck will set out again bredouilles of the Oscar in 1945.

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