Sabotage – 1936 | 76mins | Thriller| B&W

Plot Synopsis

Based on the Joseph Conrad novel The Secret Agent, Sabotage received its title because of the confusion that would have ensued with the previous film called Secret Agent. Confusion with titles resulted anyway when Hitchcock directed the American Saboteur with Robert Cummings. Conrad’s story was updated when Verloc, the anarchist who wants to destroy London, became the owner of a small cinema. Played by Oscar Homolka, Verloc is a man we pity and hate at the same time. His wife was portrayed by Sylvia Sidney, an actress whose screen career had been ebbing. Hitchcock gave her a role in which she was able to do some of her best work. The detective, posing as a vegetable salesman, was played by John Loder for whom Hitchcock had to settle when he couldn’t get his first choice, Robert Donat.

The plot of the film is uncomplicated. Verloc (Homolka) is a saboteur who uses his cinema as a front. His wife (Sidney) and her small brother (Desmond Tester) live with him. Ted, a detective in disguise as a grocery clerk, becomes friendly with Mrs. Verloc and her brother. When it is revealed that he is a detective and that Verloc is suspected of sabotage, Verloc: gives the young boy a package containing a bomb. The boy gets delayed in delivering it and the bomb explodes on the bus. Mrs. Verloc, repelled by the truth, kills Verloc with a carving knife. The murder to which she is about to confess remains undisclosed when other saboteurs get into the Bijou and blow it up.

If there is any single scene about which Hitchcock had regrets, it is the time bomb sequence. He now concedes that he was wrong to build up the audience’s suspense and then not relieve it. The explosion, killing the child and all the people on the bus, is anticlimactic. Public opinion turned against Hitchcock, not so much for letting the bomb go off, but for allowing a child to be killed in such a grisly manner. Actually the film gains in realism as it continues. It demonstrated the total lack of compassion of saboteurs and the senselessness of loss of human life and property as a means to fulfil political ideologies. Another sequence that stands out is that in which Mrs. Verloc, while cutting meat on a plate, decides to kill her husband.

There is no dialogue, no music, just quick successive shots of faces and hands clutching the knife. Sylvia Sidney thought that this, her big scene, should have dialogue, but Hitchcock proved to her that without it the scene plays more powerfully. The result is one of her best moments on the screen. Sabotage was banned from exhibition in Brazil because it upset public order, according to the South American government. The censor declared that it taught conspiracy and terrorist technique. In the United States it was released under the title A Woman Alone, which certainly didn’t help box office receipts. The reasons for the sabotage are never actually explained. Throughout the film the tension is maintained, but when it is over, the audience never really understands what it was all about.

The performances helped to maintain interest. John Loder, as the detective, did not meet Hitchcock’s standards. Hitchcock got permission from Walt Disney to include a sequence from Who Killed Cock Robin? a Silly Symphony cartoon. It is shown just as Mrs. Verloc learns of her brother’s death. She sits in the darkened theatre listening to the laughter and almost laughs against her will with them.

Extract© Richard A. Harris, Michael S. Lasky: The Complete Films of Alfred Hitchcock.