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Why Not Call This One a 'Hitchcock Masterpiece,' Too?

posted 11 years ago by ecarle
11 replies | jump to latest

SPOILERS:

I just watched "Lifeboat" on its Special Edition DVD, with a DVD doc in which USC "Hitchcock scholar" Drew Casper calls it "a masterwork."

Having sat through the whole movie again...I had to agree.

And yet: "Lifeboat" doesn't usually make the "Best of Hitchcock" lists. One wonders why. No Bernard Herrmann score? No Saul Bass credits? No Cary or Jimmy or Ingrid or Grace?

On the other hand, "Lifeboat" was one of the five only times Hitchcock got the "Best Director" nomination from the Academy (as he did NOT for Strangers on a Train, Vertigo and North by Northwest.) And Tallulah Bankhead DID get the New York Film Critics Circle award for her work.

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I like "Lifeboat" for these qualities:

1. A "one set stunt": add it to Rope and Rear Window and (a little bit) Dial M for Murder, but go one better...there's not even a single ROOM in which to stage the action. Just a lifeboat. And a big, big, big ocean.

2. "Adventure excitement." The film has great storm sequences and "process big waves" work and the climactic near smashing of the little boat by a giant German ship and a lot of explosions("Hitchcock meets Die Hard"). A lot of this almost doesn't even FEEL like "Hitchcock" -- it feels like highly competant "macho WWII action." But I think Hitchcock was telling us: "Sure, I can do that. Its not all Rebecca from me, you know."

3. WWII through a very complex lens. Is Willy the bad guy? Are the Allies the good guys? We've got a "Fascist"(sorta) rich businessman on board and a "Communist" seahand on board and -- as trickily happens sometimes -- the Commie comes off as whiny and resentful and the Fascist comes off as "reasonable." To a point..he's still a rich guy. As for Tallulah, she aligns with the rich guy AND with the Nazi(she speaks his language) and...that creates suspicion among the "Commies"(Hodiak for real, Bendix as his loyal buddy.)

4. The film is very bleak and brutal for 1944...and much of it still feels bleak and brutal today. The dead baby and the mother's suicide. The amputation of Gus's leg by Willy(that shot of the hands, the lighter flame, the knife). The merciless murder of Gus BY Willy. The merciless mob killing of Willy by "the good guys." I tell you, in some ways, this thing is as violent as "Psycho," with some "Torn Curtain/Frenzy" realism thrown in for good measure.

5. The film is very sexy for 1944...Tallulah Bankhead evidently wore no underpants on this movie...and the character FEELS like that. She's very sexy and sexual and I'm pretty sure(story-wise) that she and Hodiak's sailor managed to have some muffled sex while the other's slept. Tallulah also gets a great near cuss yell: "You son of a ---" cuts so close you practically finish the sentence. The Mary Anderson/Hume Cronyn romance is more "chaste," but she's quite the beauty, seemed(against Hitchcock's wishes) to want to sell the sex of her character, too. Hume's gonna be a very lucky guy.

6. It opens spectacularly well. I can still remember my shock, when I first saw "Lifeboat" decades ago, when that opening shot of the ship's smokestack pulled back to reveal: that's all we're gonna SEE. The REST of the ship is already underwater, and the descent of this smokestack into the swirling waves is a death plummet.

And then...in a clear precursor to the more famous opening shot of "Rear Window," Hitchcock's camera moves along the sea from one "expanatory object" to the next: A New Yorker, a deck of cards...a dead U-boat sailor...and then, in a classic "cut-cut-cut-CLOSE-UP" montage: a distant boat. Closer. Woman in a mink coat on the boat. Closer. TALLULAH. ("Your movies," said Truffaut to Htichcock, "always start from the fartherst point and reach the nearest." And those jump cuts are very much like "The farmer with the pecked out eyes" in The Birds.)

7. Tallulah loses things. The camera with which she heartlessly filmed tragedy. Her typewriter. Her necklace. She is "broken down to an elemental state." (With her mink and the breaking down of her character under fire, she clearly presages Melanie Daniels in "The Birds.")

8. A Great Charming Hitchcock Villain: Walter Slezak as Willy the Nazi. Sailor. No U-Boat captain. And surgeon in civilian life. "A Nazi Superman." With a cute, pleasant face -- and with his beard, a handsome one. And a non-threatening roly-poly body that makes him rather a match for William Bendix's GUs.

9. "Stunt Star Tallulah Bankhead." She didn't work much in movies, but Hitchcock wanted her for this. He wanted Tallulah on a lifeboat just as he would want Cary Grant in a cornfield. She rewarded Hitch with a flamboyant but realistic performance on screen...and some hell-raising off-screen that just delighted the director(Drew Casper said "She had read his clippings and he had read hers.")

10. The rest of the cast. Its one of Hitchcock's "ensemble films" really. Even Tallulah can't quite dim the other eight lights. John Hodiak(sexily shirtless and tatooed for much of the movie in a role that Fox star Henry Fonda turned down.) William Bendix(how GREAT that Hitchcock in the forties got to work at least once with "the quintessential all-American character guy.") Hume Cronyn(the Don Adams-esque little chap who had already done "Shadow of a Doubt" for Hitch and was a bit more macho here. A black actor(Canada Lee) in an important role. Henry Hull's nicely "visual" rich guy(with glasses and cigar and cocky-polite manner.)

11. "By John Steinbeck." How much did Steinbeck contribute? Evidently less than
Thornton Wilder to Shadow of a Doubt and more than Raymond Chandler to Strangers on a Train, but enough "social study" to FEEL like Steinbeck and Hitchcock had a meeting of the minds. And Jo Swerling handled the rest.

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Yep, after my latest session with "Lifeboat" -- grim, suspenseful, sexy, action packed, violent, thought-provoking, I am at a loss as to why it should NOT be listed among the Hitchcock greats.

So I guess I'll put it there.

Here's how it works. There is not a "Hitchcock Top Ten" to me.

Rather, there is a "Hitchcock Top Nine" and then a "Floating Tenth Slot," where any one of the other 40-plus Hitchcocks can go at any time.

"Lifeboat" is there right now. Heh.

[–] Hygrophonic 11 years ago

I give it a 9/10. Excellent, but short of the title "Masterwork," reserved for the 10/10's.

On that note, I could definitely make a "Hitchcock Top-Ten," and Lifeboat would make it. Along with Vertigo, Rear Window, The Birds, Frenzy, Rebecca, Strangers on a Train, Shadow of a Doubt, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), and The Lady Vanishes.

[–] gbennett5 11 years ago

I not only agree that it's a great picture, but better than some of
his more celebrated pieces. For instance, it's even lesser known than
"Suspicion", a fair film that was ruined by studio meddling. I think
it's also superior to the overrated "To Catch a Thief" (guess you can
tell, I'm not a Cary Grant fan).

As for the lack of score, there is also no scoring in "The Birds", a true
Hitch classic.

[–] ribby45 11 years ago

OP -

Bless - you love this film, I do, too.

This & Rope are Mr. H's masterpieces, for me

[–] Chiscully 11 years ago

Good thread. I appreciate the similarities to The Birds R&R: Socity girl stripped of normalcies and the lack of music.

[–] darryl-tahirali 10 years ago

Why Not Call This One a 'Hitchcock Masterpiece,' Too? - ecarle

Excellent points elegantly expressed.

Lifeboat is a five-stars-out-of-five film for me. It's an overlooked and under-appreciated classic. Terrific ensemble cast, compelling premise, and, for the war years, some edgy social and political comment.

------------------
"We hear very little, and we understand even less." - Refugee in Casablanca

[–] ecarle 9 years ago

Thank you, and I certainly agree with your thoughts!

[–] goldenagefilmstv (177) a year ago

[deleted]

[–] Doc-McCoy 9 years ago

'Here's how it works. There is not a "Hitchcock Top Ten" to me.....Rather, there is a "Hitchcock Top Nine" and then a "Floating Tenth Slot," where any one of the other 40-plus Hitchcocks can go at any time."

That's a good way to look at it.

"Lifeboat", which I just saw recently for the first time in more than 20 years, is really overlooked in the Hitchcock catalogue. Great direction, good if lesser known cast aside from Tallulah Bankhead, and excellent performances. I especially liked John Hodiak, who should have been a bigger star than he became. But Hodiak's film career was mis-managed; he went to Broadway, made a movie comeback in a few films in the mid-1950's and then died of a heart attack at 41, one day after filming a scene in a movie where his character had a heart attack.

"Life is a scam" - Steve McQueen

[–] ecarle 9 years ago

That's a good way to look at it.

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Thanks. Its really my way of saying Hitchcock made far more noteable films than just ten. The "classics" are in the Nine(Vertigo, Psycho, NBNW, Rear Window, Notorious.) Candidates for "the floating tenth" include (for me) Lifeboat, The Wrong Man, To Catch a Thief, The Man Who Knew Too Much '56(for Albert Hall and the killing of Louis Bernard), and Frenzy(as much for the spectacular late career comeback it gave Hitchcock as for its shocking sexual violence.)

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"Lifeboat", which I just saw recently for the first time in more than 20 years, is really overlooked in the Hitchcock catalogue. Great direction, good if lesser known cast aside from Tallulah Bankhead, and excellent performances.

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All agreed. The performances are particularly grim and intense for a Hitchocck movie.

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I especially liked John Hodiak, who should have been a bigger star than he became. But Hodiak's film career was mis-managed; he went to Broadway, made a movie comeback in a few films in the mid-1950's and then died of a heart attack at 41, one day after filming a scene in a movie where his character had a heart attack.

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I've read of Hodiak's heart attack, I didn't realize he was so young. 41 is pretty damn scary. He must have had a special condition?(Like Bobby Darin?)

"Lifeboat" lacks a truly major star like Grant, Stewart or Bergman. Tallulah Bankhead got the star billing all to herself, but was rather "stunt casting." She wasn't established as a bankable movie star.

And John Hodiak seems to have been one of those "second tier" leading men that Hitchcock sometimes had to put in his movies when bigger stars turned him down, as when Farley Granger got a role William Holden turned down in Strangers on a Train. I believe Hitch offered "Lifeboat" to Fox star Henry Fonda first.

But Hodiak IS good in "Lifeboat." He was certainly handsome in a distinctive way. (In movies, I've seen him with and without moustache, he looked good either way.) And he plays much of Lifeboat shirtless, fairly daring for a male actor of time not playing Tarzan. The rich girl/poor guy romance with Tallulah starts with sparks and moves to the erotic post haste(and Tallulah's not that rich, it turns out.)

I'm not too well versed in 40's movies, but there's one I like from MGM called Malaya(actually it might be a 1950 release) with Spencer Tracy and James Stewart nicely mismatched as buddies versus the WWII Japanese and other villains. Interesting: the movie has star-power enough in Tracy and Stewart, but John Hodiak is in the film too...and clearly more handsome than the two starrier leads!

[–] tlm557 8 years ago

Do you really think anyone is going to read all of that crap???

NO, the movie wasn't a masterpiece or a masterwork... and it was NOT "ok". It was a horrible movie.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Well, a few people read it.

And I disagree.