Blu-Ray Review: Alfred Hitchcock's LIFEBOAT

★★★★★

Lifeboat is one of Hitchcock’s “'limited-setting” films in the vein of Rear Window, Dial M For Murder and Rope. All of these films share in common that they are set in one place, normally a room or house, and Lifeboat is arguably the most ambitious and also his first: placing it all on a lifeboat really made Hitchcock really think how to do his signature cameo… It is also the first Hitchcock film to be released in Eureka’s ever-wonderful “Masters of Cinema” series, and hopefully not the last.

Lifeboat is about a group of American and British civilians who are stuck in the North Atlantic ocean on a lifeboat after a Nazi U-Boat sinks the ship they were on. They eventually pull aboard a German survivor. Many on the ship want him to be thrown overboard, but they eventually settle on allowing him to stay as a Prisoner of War. They have to co-exist with one another despite divisions of class, sex, race and nationality that emerge throughout the film’s brisk 95 minutes running time.

It’s one of Hitchcock’s most dramatic films, and as such very much a showcase for all of these wonderful character actors to show their ability. A modern audience might not know who Tallulah Bankhead and William Bendix are but the some old film buffs might. It creates a great feel of the unknown and dread because you never know what is going to happen next. You start to feel like you are on this lifeboat yourself after a while, which helps the film be more affecting.

The film was criticized at the time because it painted this Nazi as a human being and not just this monster. I think it’s very effective, he is a deceiving bastard eventually but he has some real depth. It was a piece of wartime propaganda with the Nazi eventually being the bad guy but that’s not a bad thing. The handling of the black character played by Canada Lee is very stereotypical of the time. Canada tried to make something with it even though he said he failed with doing so.
 

Hitchcock does probably his most inventive cameo of his whole career: I will only say that it involves a newspaper. Lifeboat is a interesting film for many reasons in Hitchcock’s career, it’s the first of his “'limited-setting” films, it’s one of his few films to deal with war, it’s a much more dramatic film than normal for him with strong performances from interesting array of actors and it’s one of Hitchcock’s finest films and possibly most humane.

Ian Schultz
Rating: PG
Blu-Ray (Re-)Release Date: 2012
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast:Tallulah Bankhead, William Bendix, Henry Hull, Hume Cronyn
Buy Lifeboat: On Blu-ray [1944]