Sabotage (1939)

It was the start of what came to be known as "the Hitchcock touch..."
The start of a film: the head of a girl in close-up... She is very blonde, and her fair curls fill the screen... She is screaming... Cut to a theater sign, announcing a show called "Tonight, Golden Curls." The lights of the sign are reflected in water... From that water the golden-curled girl is pulled to land... She is no longer screaming... She is dead... Murdered!

That scene was more than the start of a film... It was the start of what came to be known as "the Hitchcock touch" and, because of that, it was also the real start of suspense films in England...

The year was 1927 and the film was "The Lodger."

There had been British suspense films before that... Alfred Hitchcock had directed films before that... But from the first moment of "The Lodger" there was apparent an imaginative authority in the creation of thrillers that was to grow into the greatest professionalism the genre has known throughout Hitchcock's career... It is a pity that it did not begin to grow so lavishly throughout the whole British film industry until many years later...

"The Lodger," based on a novel by Mrs. Belloc Lowndes, was set in a Jack the Ripper-type murder wave in a foggy London... The victims were always blonde girls, always murdered on the same day of the week...

While the whole capital speculates in panic, a new lodger turns up at a quiet boarding house... He wears a black cloak and carries a black bag...

There are other details which cause the finger of suspicion to tremble towards him ... so is he or isn't he the mass-murderer? Well, you have to see the movie, and to follow a theme that was to dominate many of Hitchcock's later films: the innocent man wrongly accused...

Terrorism affects everyone
Hitchcock's Sabotage is an important film for our times as well as the late 1930's in which it premiered. A group of Nazi terrorists are working within England in the days immediately preceeding WWII. One of these is the small cinema owner Verloc whose involvement at the beginning of the film is limited to the nonviolent shutdown of a power station. Later he is tasked with delivering a bomb to Picadilly Circus. This plot goes terribly wrong and a family member is killed.

The disc I viewed is by Laserlight and was not terribly good. The image and sound quality were poor but this was to be expected from such a low priced offering. The upside is that one gets to view an early film by Hitchcock that is not well known and generally available. It would be great if a better transfer were made available for some of these earlier works but this one is well worth checking out.

It Launched Hitchcock's Career
The Lodger was wonderful - it established Hitch's flair for visual imagery and proved how a story could be told without words.

Like Gloria Swanson once said, "Who needs dialogue? We had...faces."

Note Ivor Novello's face as he's being pursued by an angry mob. It's expressive without ever being "over the top." And Hitch's vigorous and innovative camera work make it all the better.

You'll love it, and they're practically giving it away here...