LIFEBOAT (1944), dir. Alfred Hitchcock

The best compliment that I can give “Lifeboat” is to call it utterly unpredictable. From scene to scene – within scenes, too – I never had a firm bead on where the plot was headed. Like the main characters in the titular craft, who find themselves adrift at sea after a Nazi attack, I also had to let myself be carried along by unseen forces, which in this case were Hitchcock and screenwriter Jo Swirling. There is no other option. Even if you think you know what the “master of suspense” has planned with this adaptation of a short story by John Steinbeck, he will refute your expectations repeatedly. Trust me: Just hang on for the ride.

Part of the film looks like it was shot in front of a projection screen, others on a soundstage or possibly the open water. I wasn’t always aware of the difference, which is a plus, considering that special effects scenes in old movies tend to show seams. But even during what might have been a complicated, trick-heavy sequence – for example, when the small ship gets battered about by a passing storm – “Lifeboat” never seems hokey. Some credit belongs to Hitchcock’s sound technicians, who clearly knew their way around wave crashes and wind-gust whistles. But accolades should also get passed along to the director himself, who pioneered the art of cutting the music off to build an atmosphere of dread and foreboding.

Indeed, the longer “Lifeboat” stays afloat, the more it becomes saturated with the mood of danger. Don’t be fooled into thinking that this will be a departure from standard Hitchcock fare, just because we are removed this time from symbols of civilization, e.g., the passenger car in "The Lady Vanishes." The director continues his pattern of juxtaposing the ordinary with the terrible, of invading what we perceive to be safe sanctuaries. The ocean starts off looking like a placid, thoroughly innocuous place to find oneself, but Hitchcock delves beneath the surface – or shows something emerging up from it, at least – to reveal how illusory our safety is, and how ironic the title choice really was.

Further enhancing the unpredictable nature of the movie is the casting, which is pitch-perfect in one crucial role. I speak, of course, of actor Walter Slezak, who played the Nazi captain who sank the cruise liner everyone had been traveling aboard. Should the others trust him? He claims that he attacked under orders, and has an unassuming, cherubic face to go with charm, intelligence, and nautical experience. Tallulah Bankhead is also terrific as a materialistic socialite who can go from calm to bedlam in two-seconds-flat. But Slezak is the real casting coup. He embodied a recurring Hitchcock model: guile and resourcefulness hidden beneath a gentle-looking exterior. In other words, something terrible disguised as something ordinary.

Overall rating: ***