User Reviews

Watching Alfred Hitchcock's early British films is a treat for this viewer, particularly in seeing the director's experimentation with themes that will become better known in his more famous American movies. "Sabotage" becomes an intriguing psychological drama even after the early revelation of the parts his key characters play in the story.

Particularly vile is Karl Anton Verloc (Oscar Homolka), a terrorist conspiring to plant bombs in association with an underground cadre. He uses a London cinema house as a front for his activities, while his antagonist, a Scotland Yard detective named Spencer (John Loder) attempts to get enough evidence to expose him. Verloc is married to an American woman (Sylvia Sidney) who is unaware of his activities.

With tense precision, Hitchcock visually reinforces the timing of Verloc's next bombing, even though the actual target is never mentioned by name. To carry out his mission, he enlists the services of his wife's young brother Stevie. As Stevie gets sidetracked by the distractions that would affect any teenager, he becomes the victim of Verloc's plot when the bomb detonates, destroying a London bus.

Mrs. Verloc's consolation comes in the form of revenge. The moment of retribution takes form almost immediately after she catches herself laughing at scenes of a Disney cartoon playing in the cinema - "Who killed Cock Robin?" indeed. In classic Hitchcock style, the director makes use of quick cuts to the saboteur, the wife serving dinner, plates of food, and of course, a knife. Needless to say, the knife finds it's mark, and with it, a cold satisfaction for the audience.

As in Hitchcock's first talking film, 1929's "Blackmail", the director uses deft sleight of hand to shift blame for Verloc's death to a surrogate. In the earlier film, a case could be made that the female killer was acting in self defense. Here, the event was achieved with spontaneous calculation. In both movies, the female lead was just on the edge of making a confession when abrupt dismissal by the authorities led them to a different conclusion about the murders.

The film left me curious about a couple of things, the main one being how audiences of the time reacted to the death of an innocent teenager. It seems to me that this would have been a particularly controversial subject for the time. On a very different note, I was left wondering whether the appearance of a rather large billboard directly behind the bombed bus was intentional or not; it was an ad for Coca Cola.

Though it's been stated otherwise by other reviewers on this site, the movie does have it's light moment even if only one, the Disney sequence notwithstanding. In an early scene at the pet shop, an old biddy tries to return a canary that doesn't sing. The shop owner has no trouble getting the bird to warble, implying that maybe it's the lady's fault. Strange though, that the shop would also have chickens and a rooster!

For reasons that are left unexplained -- and maybe it should be so -- Karl Verloc (Oscar Homolka) is working for unknown forces by terrorizing London natives as he sets off bombs. His wife's brother Stevie is the patsy given these packages to be delivered once they reach their destination at a certain time. Until one delivery goes terribly wrong and causes the innocent Stevie his life.

It's the sequence that is Hitchcock's earliest depictions of what he describes as suspense. The boy, whom we have grown to like over the course of the film, is on his way to a location on a bus carrying the bomb inside a package. Hitchcock cuts between the package, the street, the Big Ben, over and over and over until the tension becomes so unbearable and is finally released in an explosion which kills the boy.

While Hitchcock in his interview with Truffaut would later state that putting the boy in this situation is something that he resented because the audience at that time reacted negatively at this, I think this is a mistake. Because there is another character, Mrs. Verloc (played by Sylvia Sidney), who will eventually come to realize what she has been slowly fearing all along -- that her husband is the person behind the acts of sabotage -- she has to lose a person close to her to take action.

In the climactic sequence which resembles a silent film, Mrs. Verloc brings murder and retribution home without a line of dialogue but only using her survival instincts and those sad, expressive eyes. Hitchcock shifts from her face, to Homolka's, to the food they are eating, to her holding the knife, until we cannot bear it anymore and in a moment of almost casual surprise, it happens. It's too bad Hitchcock and she did not work again; she would have made an excellent Hitchcock heroine.

The Director would explore the theme of the suspicious wife time and again on two other films. In the correctly titled SUSPICION, Joan Fontaine would be the wife who has to come to terms with the gnawing fact that her dashing husband's love may be killing her, and in DIAL M FOR MURDER would bring to focus what was implied in SUSPICION.

I cannot imagine how people rate this film highly. Have you ever seen the brief bit on Hitchcock between movies on TCM? Andre de Toth lambastes Hitch as a lazy and sloppy film-maker. After seeing Sabotage for the first time, I now understand why.

I don't think Oscar Homolka is intended to be funny in this drama, he's dumb as a box of rocks! (In fact, every character in this movie is conveniently stupid!) In the aquarium scene, Homolka's contact informs him that he won't get paid until he accomplishes his job; Homolka's minor interruption of electric service did not do the trick! But Homolka just says, "Huh? I don't understand?" He is equally slow to catch on to the idea of bombing Picadilly Circus. HELLO! Then he stumbles into the wrong side of the exit turnstile, can't figure it out and struggles there until the next person to exit pulls him into the right side. (Otherwise, I guess he'd still be struggling like a wind-up toy spinning its wheels in futility against a wall!) Then he has to be fed constant reminders about "Saturday at 1:45." He is so incompetent and stupid that it is difficult to see his being used in a spy ring - even as a dupe.

The scene where Homolka goes to the bomb-maker's bird shop is totally inexplicable. In the spy game, contacts among agents are strictly minimized. Yet Homolka's visit serves no purpose. We meet the bomb-maker's family. We see his daughter's toys mixed up in his bomb-makings. We see that he keeps his ingredients in ketchup bottles and jam jars. But Homolka doesn't need to be there when the film-maker shows us these things. He risks going there just to be told that he will receive the bomb in a birdcage??? Why didn't the aquarium contact tell him that?

The undercover Scotland Yard man is equally dumb. We never hear him explain to either Sydney or Homolka who he is or show them any identification. He just launches into his interrogation of Sylvia Sydney in the open theater right under Homolka's nose. Now that's smart and discreet! He ends up revealing more to her than she reveals to him, even though she should logically still be under suspicion. He promptly interrogates Homolka in the same way. He doesn't ever identify himself, but just launches into an interrogation. But he ends up giving Homolka more information than he gets. It's a cinch that Scotland Yard didn't build its reputation on the likes of that agent!

When Sydney learns of her brother's death, things really start to fall apart. Thereafter nobody behaves in a logical way or in a way that I could identify with. Apparently convinced of Homolka's responsibility, Sydney doesn't go immediately to the undercover agent, like any rational person. Instead she exposes herself and invites her doom by directly confronting her husband - who she apparently believes is a ruthless murderer. For his part, Homolka just says,"Sure I was responsible, but, hey, it's no use crying over spilt milk; why can't the cook ever prepare green veggies." THAT whole scene between Sydney and Homolka is surreal - not a syllable of dialog that seems to ring true under the circumstances! Sydney cries, but she never seems to portray either real shock and/or grief or SUPPRESSION of shock and/or grief in order to maintain Homolka's trust. The little boy's death is an emotional footnote in this story. Even when Sydney awakens from fainting and envisions her brother's image among the faces peering at her, or when she stops the child wearing the identical tie during her flight after killing Homolka, there is negligible emotional impact.

When the bomb-maker's wife urges her husband to retrieve the birdcage from Homolka, we are left to ask,"Why???" What is so incriminating about a couple of birds in a cage that Homolka gave the boy? So, she shoves him out the door of their shop with his hat, coat and umbrella. No bomb. No time to make one. Does he just keep 'em lying around ready-made "just in case???" No bomb when he hails the cab. No bomb in the cab. No bomb when he goes up to Homolka's apartment. But - PRESTO, bomb! when he locks himself in the apartment and threatens the detectives banging on the door!

Then after the bomb goes off, the detective in charge just tells Sydney she is free to go. The good inspector knows enough to absolve the wife of a terrorist without any investigation! In fact it is NOT apparent to anybody in the film - ONLY to us the audience - that Sydney is innocent! Unless you assume some uncorroborated statements she has provided the investigator - which the audience didn't hear!

This is just a sampling of the holes in this movie that are so big and so numerous and so glaring that, like Andre de Toth, I am compelled to conclude that Hitchcock was a very sloppy and lazy filmmaker. Could Hitch have imparted missing information to both the audience and the characters in the film? You bet, easily! Could he have imparted it in scenes that were more credible in a supposed spy-story? Absolutely! Could he have created characters who didn't have to be dumb or defy professional standards in Scotland Yard to advance this story. DUH! One commentator characterized this story as "tightly written." He must have gotten this film confused with some other movie. This movie absolutely fails to hang together at all. ALL of Hitchcock's British films are vastly superior to this piece of swiss cheese.

I chuckled at this movie - just not at the parts that were intended to be funny. Mostly I just scratched my head. How could this mess have been directed by one of cinema's greatest?

French intellectuals probably love Sabotage: Story and pace might not hold the interest of the general public for long, but this movie is a multi layered affair with a lot of stuff to analyze. I read Joseph Conrad's sadly prophetic novel about terrorism in our modern day world before I knew that a Hitchcock treatment existed, and I just admire how the master of suspense succeeded in adapting the story (written around the year 1900) to the conditions in "Hitchcockland". There is suspense, there are funny scenes, but Sabotage is, compared with The Man Who Knew Too Much or The 39 steps, a rather serious movie that investigates the dark sides of the condition of human nature in modern times. There are different particularities that I think are quite unique and worth a comment.

POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD

Certain parts of Sabotage seem to pay tribute to the silent era expressionist and avant garde heritage of Germany and the Soviet Union. The movie starts in an impressive, unforgettable way: First we see a dictionary, then Battersea Power Station with one smoking chimney in the moonlight, then a gaudily lit city street at night. The lights in the street go out; change to a piece of big machinery half in water, lit only by a flashlight; several hands excitedly fussing with the machinery, digging up a muddy substance from the water, rubbing the substance between the fingers. Then the first words of the movie are spoken by an anonymous voice: "Sand!". Then another voice "Sabotage!". Then a third voice: "Who did it?" With a quick succession of different scenes – partially accompanied with a nasty humming sound like from a generator - the viewer is brought right into the movie. The audience is now informed about the dark nature of the subject – terrorism - and the wanted atmosphere is firmly established.

The use of spaces or spatial sequences is extraordinary. They have a symbolic significance that in my opinion is uncommon in later Hitchcock movies. The main character, Mr. Verloc, operates a small, shoddy movie theatre, the Bijou. He lives, together with his young wife and her brother, in a small appartment behind the movie screen. Whoever wants to visit the Verlocs walks up to the ridiculously pompuous, brightly lit front of the Bijou, passes through the front into the dark, stuffy small screening room, walks towards the screen, passes it and is at the Verloc's door. Mr. Verloc, a twisted character without discernible ethnic or ethical roots, executes acts of sabotage or terrorism for whoever pays him. The sequence of light and darkness that lead from the outside to the "brain" that concocts acts of madness is repeatedly shown in the movie. A detective tries to squeeze himself into the space behind the screen in an attempt to spy, but there he is unprotected and spotted by the people in the appartment. At the end of the movie, Mrs. Verloc, fleeing from the appartment when she understands that Mr. Verloc caused her brother's death, gets stuck in the "dream zone" of the screening room. She stops and watches a sequence of a Disney animated picture, somehow re enacting her brother‘s carefree life and its brutal end. The movie in the movie makes her state of distress more acute. She turns back to the appartment and finally stabs Mr. Verloc to death. A similar spatial sequence as in the Bijou is shown in a pet shop. In its back room a bomb is prepared for Mr. Verloc by the owner, an equally miserable and twisted character. Again there is a "respectable" front, a middle zone with a surreal situation (many caged exotic animals), and a stuffy back room for a chaotic unconventional family of three (in this case father, daughter, granddaughter) where modern-day sciences are turned into a senseless destructive force. The meeting between Mr. Verloc and his anonymous employers (as in Conrad's novel, it is never explained who they are and in whose favor the acts of terrorism should be) takes place in the zoo, in a dark cavern with windows into different aquarium (I strongly suspect Orson Welles of having copied the set with few alterations for The Lady from Shanghai). The conspiracy thus takes places in a subterranean commando bunker (a predecessor of Ken Adam's war room) from which you do not see a clearly defined "battlefield" but just murky waters and strange, silent creatures moving through space in slow motion. In a short, dream like sequence the scared Mr. Verloc sees through one of the aquarium windows Piccadilly Circus distorted and destroyed by the bomb he is ordered to plant there.

In Sabotage the sets are very important. The character's lives are conditioned by their surroundings. They move little. There is not too much action and the viewers of the movie are required to watch carefully. Maybe this is Hitchcock at his most uncommercial ...

Although it's probably evident if you've read some of the other things I've written, I'm not a writer. I sometimes have difficulty putting my thoughts on a given movie into words. For whatever reason, I'm having more problems writing about Sabotage than I usually do with a movie. There are a lot of things I enjoyed about the movie. The plot, the acting (especially Sylvia Sidney), and Hitchcock's ability to create tension worked for me. Like a lot of others, the "bomb on the bus" scene is the highlight of the movie. Hitchcock's genius at creating tension is as evident in this scene as any I've run across.

Even though I've rated the film a 7/10, there are problems I have with Sabotage that bothered me. I usually hate the term "dated" when discussing movies, but it's the best term I can come up with to describe my feeling toward Sabotage. It might be that I haven't seen enough British films from the 30s or maybe it was the poor transfer on the DVD I watched, but I couldn't shake the feeling. It's really a minor point and it won't deter me from my mission of watching and discovering more of Hitchcock's older, pre-Hollywood films.

This film makes use of clever reference to locations, often at their darkest and most shadowy - Mr Verloc sabotages Battersea Power Station and brings darkness but his wife Winnie, (Sylvia Sydney) is always radiantly lit. In fact, Hitchcock the illusionist, created the 'locations' with giant photographs (stills exist of the shooting). His classic 'business' is perfectly in place - the contrast between the growing menace of Verloc and the 'English' humour is a characteristic which he refined here. An early cameo of Charles Hawtrey explaining the lives of fish at the aquarium while Verloc plots a bombing, the old lady arguing about a canary with the pet-shop owner who is also a homicidal bomber who keep ingredients in the larder! The latter is also henpecked by his gawky daughter (played by an unrecognisable Martita Hunt, not in Ms Havisham mode).Stevie, the heartbreakingly delightful brother is carrying the bomb to the Lord Mayor's show, while every device a crowd offers holds him up and builds the tension.

The scene where Winnie stabs Verloc (Oscar Homolka) is a triumph of understatement - it is banal evil: a struggle over the dinner table - Winnie stabs Verloc almost in one motion without effort, and without a clear purpose. Typically, having disposed of the villain, a trick leaves her free- the bomber strikes before the police can find Verloc's body. Hitchcock shies away from Conrad's bleak ending where Winnie is tricked out of the money and throws herself off a channel ferry. That would not be Hitch's style and this film is very much about style.