I must apologize, non-existent readers, for missing a few days. I'll be busier now, as I'm returning to University in a few days, but I'll try to keep up. And what a way to get back- Hitchcock's birthday. I figured since I looked at Bunuel (and hopefully I'll look at his films one by one soon) I should cover old Hitch, a director everyone should admire. Covering all of Hitchcock is too much, so for this week I'll look at a few of his films, starting with one of his strangest and weakest.
Lifeboat instantly had me hooked with the premise- survivors from a WWII attack are stuck on a lifeboat, and take on a German from the U-Boat that sunk them. Hitchcock utilizes the limited setting well, as one would expect, allowing us to grow attached to the characters and the setting. The film is well directed and shot certainly, like all of Hitchcock, but surprisingly it feels bare, and even downright ugly under the surface.
Perhaps the biggest problem lies in the script, based on a story by John Steinbeck, although the acclaimed novelist was supposedly displeased by the adaptation. The film is solely a product of its time. Bill, the African-American man on the boat, or portrayed as a weak stereotype, forever grateful to his white saviors. Even for the forties, where a modern audience needs to have some patience with stereotypes on screen, its exhausting and off-putting.
But the biggest issue is even more of a remnant- the total villainization of Germans. The U-Boat captain is simply an evil twisted man, but is meant to resemble all Germans in an incredibly ugly caricature. The Captain attempts to steer out boat directly to his own ship, leading all of the survivors into capture, and freeing himself, and also hoards water from the others. The film concludes shockingly, as the survivors straight up beat the man nearly, if not completely, to death, throw him off the boat, and bash him with an oar to prevent him from boarding.
However, the ugliest and most dated scene of the film is when the lifeboat is spotted by a Nazi ship, which is soon bombed. The lifeboat picks up another German, a young sailor, who draws a gun on the survivors. Now, doing this is not only pathetic, but also cowardly, further bringing down the reputation of the German in Lifeboat. And of course, the German in ultimately weak when confronted, seen when the survivors strip him of the gun easily, leaving his fate to them as they swarm him, and ending with the question:
"What do you do with people like that?"
Even for a piece of propaganda, that's pretty terrible, especially with the Hitchcock and Steinbeck names attached. I know I dealt mainly with the plot, which is unfair in a way, since the film itself, from a technical standpoint, is pretty outstanding, exploring a small space well and bouncing back between characters, and films like Birth of a Nation get passes for controversial content because of their merit. While I think that could be true and one needs to look at the time period to analyze a film, Lifeboat's importance isn't on par with BoaN. However, Lifeboat should still be seen as a technical piece and viewed through the lens that the film is a trumped up propaganda piece when analyzing the messages.
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