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DVD Lifeboat (Special Edition)
Part mystery, part wartime polemic, Lifeboat finds director Alfred Hitchcock tackling a cinematic challenge that foreshadows the self-imposed handicaps of Rope and Rear Window. As with those subsequent features, Hitchcock confines his action and characters to a single set, in this instance the lone surviving lifeboat from an Allied freighter sunk by a German U-boat in the North Atlantic. A less confident, ingenious filmmaker might have opened up John Steinbeck's dialogue-driven character study beyond the battered boat and its cargo of survivors, but Hitchcock instead revels in his predicament to exploit the enforced intimacy between his characters.
Indeed, we never actually see the doomed freighter--the smoking ship's funnel beneath the credits simply sinks beneath the waves, and we're plunged into the escalating tensions between those who gradually find their way to the boat, a band of eight English and American passengers and crew, plus a German sailor (Walter Slezak) rescued from the U-boat, itself destroyed by the freighter's deck gun. Heading the cast and inevitably commanding their and our attention is the cello-voiced Tallulah Bankhead as Connie Porter, a cynical, sophisticated writer whose priorities seem to be hanging onto her mink and keeping her lipstick fresh. Gradually, the others find Porter and her lifeboat, forming a temporary community that inevitably suggests a careful cross section of archetypes, from wealthy industrialist (Henry Hull) to ship's boiler men (John Hodiak and William Bendix).
Hitchcock juggles the interpersonal skirmishes between the boat's occupants with the mystery of their German prisoner, which itself becomes a meditation on the fine line between nationalism and morality, a line that Slezak walks delicately until his identity is resolved. Visually, Hitchcock transforms his back-lot set and its rear-projected cloudbanks into a desolate stretch of ocean, while capturing the horror of an amputation through an economical set of images culminating in an empty boot. --Sam Sutherland
Dying together's even more personal than living together.
What would you do if you were stuck in a lifeboat with a hodgepodge of people and limited supplies? Does this sound like one of those corporate games? Well watch this movie and see how close you come to this fascinating Hitchcock (John Steinbeck story adapted by Jo Swerling) tale. Shot in monochrome adds to the hopeless feel.
It is WWII and a ship is torpedoed and its lifeboats are shot at. Before they went down they dispatched the dastardly U-Boat.
Now an only remaining Lifeboat is being loaded one at a time with a self-centered female journalist (Tallulah Bankhead), a boisterous businessman (Henry Hull), the radio ship's operator, a timid nurse, a ship's steward, a wounded sailor (William Bendix), and an overbearing engineer. We do not stop here the next to be pulled aboard does not speak English (Walter Slezak.)
As with all mixed people movies we slowly earn about everyone's background and a few secrets. As they start picking on each other we see that the only stable person seems to be the U-Boat passenger they picked up. If it were not for him people would have dies and or got lost. Besides doing most of the thinking for them he also has to do most of the rowing.
So why is everyone so upset?
Will they make it on their limited supplies and against the unpredictable sea?
Flagship
The only time the camera leaves the single setting of this film is when it goes overboard and underwater to watch a giant fish nibble at a diamond bracelet sparkling on a fishhook. The rest of the time it watches the eight survivors of a shipwreck confined to a lifeboat, a challenge that Alfred Hitchcock sets for himself and aces. "Lifeboat" is a wartime propaganda picture, certainly, but also one of the master director's early black-and-white American classics. It would be notable if only because it showcases the outrageous Broadway star Tallulah Bankhead in her only film role worth watching or even remembering.
Hitchcock, working from an original short story by John Steinbeck and a script by Jo Swerling, presents a microcosm of Americans and Brits behaving in ways that clarify the strengths and weaknesses of a world at war. Only the murderous German U-boat captain, in an indelible performance by Walter Slezak, is able to cope. The star turn by Bankhead, as a shallow dilettante reporter, is bruising to behold on DVD today. "Lifeboat" took some unearned flak as undermining the Allied war effort. Nonsense, of course, and it went on to earn its niche in the Hitchcock canon as one of the most unusual war stories ever filmed.
"You're only thinking of yourselves, "You're not thinking of the boat"
While Alfred Hitchcock's 1944 film Lifeboat is not my favorite of his film, it certainly has a lot going for it, not the least of which is a bejeweled and glamorous Tallulah Bankhead playing a feisty war reporter, stranded on a life boat with a mismatched group of survivors.
Lifeboat was an experimental film for Hitchcock; he reportedly wanted to make "order out of all the chaos of movie making," to see if he could really make a compelling movie with the action taking place in one location and the drama developed without recourse to flashbacks or cutaways. The end result is a film that is done cleverly and stylishly.
Lifeboat is pretty much an exercise in allied propaganda with entire picture taking place in a small boat, as the survivors of a torpedoed luxury liner find themselves cast adrift with the captain of the U-boat that sank them.
Lifeboat begins as we see the funnel of a ship slinking and various objects floating away: a copy of the New Yorker, playing cards, wooden spoons, a chessboard, and finally a corpse. With this sobering sight, we cut to the film's glamorous Tallulah Bankhead sitting alone in a lifeboat. Her Constance Porter is a journalist, and a bit of a rough diamond; as she lights up one of her cigarettes, we get the impression that she seems remarkably unfazed by what has just happened.
She whips out a camera to film the survivors as they climb into the boat. This enrages Kovac (John Hodiak), the resident socialist, and he throws her camera overboard. Soon other survivors are climbing aboard: There's low-class Brit Stanley (Hume Cronyn), natty capitalist C. D. Rittenhouse (Henry Hull), dopey Gus (William Bendix), reformed pickpocket Joe (Canada Lee), pretty nurse Miss MacKenzie (Mary Anderson), Mrs. Higgins (Heather Angel), a mad woman with a dead baby, and Willy (Walter Slezak), a corpulent Nazi.
The fact that they have a German on board infuriates Kovac, who thinks they should toss him overboard. But the others, especially Connie feels that he should be allowed to stay, citing the laws of democracy. Connie also speaks German and discovers that the man was Captain of the U-Boat and that he may be able to help them survive.
The group faces many obstacles, in their efforts to stay alive, battling the stormy elements, lack of food and fresh water, the scorn and suspicion for each other that society has ingrained into them, and, chiefly, their collective mistrust for a Nazi U-boat sailor, whom, despite his villainous credentials, they must invest their faith.
When Gus's leg becomes gangrenous, the group must decide whether it should be amputated, but it is soon discovered that only the Nazi has the necessary surgical skills. Meanwhile, a gentle romance simmers between Alice and Stanley. George who has a penchant for the Gospels, stands as the group's moral pillar; he is apolitical and totally good-hearted.
But the center of the film, and by far the best reason to see it is Tallulah, which Hitchcock eventually brings into focus as the film's emblem. We get to like her character more as she is gradually stripped of her material accoutrements.
At first we are unsympathetic to Connie but, we soon change our minds, as she has sympathy for the nurse's troubles, she kisses Gus before his leg is cut off - a lusty, open-mouthed Tallulah kiss - kisses Kovac when they think they're going to die, and gives a definitive answer to Joe's prayer: "How about giving Him a hand?" she asks.
The rest of the cast is uniformly good and the movie boasts the filmmaker's trademark technical polish: His command over editing, framing, and optical effects are spot on, and his ability to create a convincing storm is startling, considering the limitations of the period in which the film was made.
Hitchcock intended Lifeboat to be a microcosm of the Allied war effort, and to a certain extent it is. But the film also shows ordinary people under pressure; it never softens their edges and is able to boldly trace their war-weary dynamic. Lifeboat is all about the breaking down of the social veneers, that of class, education, and nationality, and it charts a group of people's descent into the vengeful darkness where none of them imagined they could ever go. Mike Leonard October 05.
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The long-awaited emergence of Nightmare Alley into the light of DVD should achieve two things: make a legendary film noir available to a new generation, and restore the horrific charge to the lately watered-down term geek, a concept that once had the power to give people very bad dreams indeed.
To his lasting credit, Tyrone Power--20th Century Fox's extraordinarily handsome but not terribly interesting star of the '30s and '40s--begged for the chance to play Stan Carlisle, the predatory charmer who snakes his way through this bracingly unwholesome story. A spieler for--and lover of--carnival mind reader Zeena (Joan Blondell), he displays uncanny skill at "reading" the susceptible rubes, including a tough sheriff who turns to jelly after Stan psychs him out. Once Stan's... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Tyrone Power - Joan Blondell - Coleen Gray Director(s): Edmund Goulding DVD Release Date: Released the 07 June 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Almost as welcome as a shaker full of martinis, The Complete Thin Man Collection represents an eagerly awaited DVD milestone for fans of the fizzy MGM movie series. The best film in the series came first: The Thin Man (1934), W.S. Van Dyke's marvelous adaptation of a Dashiell Hammet novel. The movie gods were in a generous mood when they paired William Powell and Myrna Loy as Nick and Nora Charles, the upper-class sophisticates whose sleuthing escapades somehow joined the classic form of the whodunit with the giddyup of screwball comedy. Among the series' many attributes, one of its most radical notions was the idea that a married couple might find each other delightful and view life as a goofy adventure together.
It is common wisdom that the Thin Man sequels... More Info about this DVD Director(s): W.S. Van Dyke DVD Release Date: Released the 02 August 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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