LIFEBOAT: Blu-ray (2oth Century-Fox, 1944) Kino Lorber
Right in the
middle of shooting his most ambitious picture to date, director, Alfred
Hitchcock was approached by his cinematographer, Glen MacWilliams with nervous
unease. It seems Tallulah Bankhead, the eccentric Southerner and ‘name above the title’ in Hitch’s
ensemble ‘one-set’ melodrama, Lifeboat (1944)
was not wearing any underwear; a casual misgiving for which the ribald Bankhead
was well-known. Unmoved by MacWilliams’ inference that, at the current angle of
photography the camera would likely ‘expose’
all, Hitchcock rather drolly replied, “I’m
sure I don’t know if that’s more a concern for wardrobe or hair-styling.” All
kidding aside, Lifeboat is Alfred
Hitchcock’s most technically proficient and dismally underrated masterpiece;
Hitch’s passion for the project – a loan out and means to escape the tyrannical
micromanagement of producer, David O.Selznick (who owned his ironclad contract)
virtually submarined by the picture’s ill-timed release (the war, you know) and
the critical consensus Hitch’ had somehow made a ‘pro-Nazi’ piece of propaganda
by infusing sympathy into the character of Kapitan Willi (supremely realized by
newcomer to the movies, Walter Slezak with an undercurrent of insidiously
disingenuousness). Indeed, critic Dorothy Thompson gave Lifeboat “ten days to get out
of town”, a sentiment echoed by noted New York Times columnist, Bosley
Crowther, who suggested Hitchcock’s depiction of the Nazi as something of a
caricature of Friedrich Nietzsche’s superman was the perfect whiplash against ‘decadent democracies’. It did not help
the picture’s reputation John Steinbeck, the eminent writer responsible for its
source material, followed suit, denouncing Jo Swerling’s screenplay and
publicly requesting producer, Darryl F. Zanuck remove all references to his
authorship from 2oth Century-Fox’s marketing campaigns.
Hitchcock,
together with Bankhead’s firm denunciation of Lifeboat’s pro-Axis detractors as ‘moronic’, made valiant strides to spin the brewing controversy in
the picture’s favor, but to no avail. Lifeboat
would quietly vanish from marquees across the country at Zanuck’s behest;
buried in the studio’s annals as a very expensive footnote to Hitchcock’s
career, and, the proverbial ‘one that got away’; a real shame and money-loser, given
the superb performances by all involved. Lifeboat
ought to have made a star out of John Hodiak; a Fox contract player, virtually
relegated to B-grade fodder and never again to be given as plum a part as John
Kovac; the decisive and nubile proletariat who foresees Willi’s treason but is
powerless to convince everyone else of the potential threat he poses. Hodiak’s
best moments are intermittently timed throughout Lifeboat to make him the unofficial ‘name above the title’: a shirtless, gutsy, and tattooed antagonist,
challenging chichi gossip columnist, Constance Porter’s (Bankhead)
self-righteous air of importance; knocking her 8mm portable home movie camera
overboard and later, almost taken to giving her head a good shake in the throes
of passion, also, perhaps, in the hopes of knocking the good sense God gave a
lemon into it. William Bendix equally distinguishes himself as Gus Smith; a
naïve first mate on the torpedoed ship; suffering a life-threatening wound, the
amputation of his leg, and finally, deliberate murder at Willi’s hand. For color, Hitchcock added Mary Anderson as
Canadian nurse, Alice MacKenzie, and Heather Angel – Mrs. Higley; the
shell-shocked Brit-born mother, still clutching her newly-deceased newborn in
her arms. For added testosterone, Hitchcock feathered in one-time Universal
contract player, Henry Hull (as careworn millionaire, Charles J. Rittenhouse
Jr.), Hume Cronyn (bookish ship’s engineer, Sparks Garrett) and finally, Canada
Lee (as cook, Joe Spen).
Hitchcock had
been inspired by Steinbeck’s novella – a harrowing depiction of survival on the
unrelenting sea after a passenger ocean liner is torpedoed by Nazi U-boats. Steinbeck’s
interwoven narrative did present Hitchcock with a singular difficulty: how,
exactly, to make 90 minutes of confinement in the relatively limited space of a
rickety wooden lifeboat into high stakes cinematic suspense of his usual – or
in this case, unusual – high caliber. And Hitch’ for all his determination to will
another masterful thriller to add to his ever-increasing reputation as ‘the master of suspense’ in his adopted
Hollywood, was perhaps most acutely aware of the fact his native England was
similarly embroiled in a fight for her very survival on par with the fictional
microcosm being accounted for in Lifeboat.
“It was very immediate for my father,”
Patricia Hitchcock recalls, “I remember
him trying to telephone home upon learning of the declaration of war, the
operator abruptly cutting in and saying ‘This country is at war…no outgoing
calls!’ before disconnecting the line.” Lifeboat is, in hindsight, a timely parable for England’s endurance
against the Nazi threat; Hitchcock cleverly disguising its message under a
patina of impeccable craftsmanship, further shielded by the eclectic roster of
talent assembled to tell the tale: a potpourri of nationalities, temperaments
and social castes thrust together by the cruel hand of fate and even harsher
circumstances of the elements to overcome hourly adversities, including threats
from within, an unrelenting storm at sea, and, during the movie’s climax, a
perilous shelling from Allied and Nazi salvage vessels circling in their midst.
Hitchcock also
faced criticism from the NAACP for Canada Lee’s portrait of the stoic black
domestic; a performance, in tandem, praised for its ‘compassionate and dependable’ heroism, while condemned as
incredulously ‘tokenistic’ and overly
simplified. Can’t have it both ways, I suppose; though there is little doubt
Lee’s Joe is the least utilized and most underdeveloped characterization within
this central cast, despite Joe’s eleventh hour disarming of William Yetter
Jr.’s second, and never named German officer pulled from the sea. Plot wise, Lifeboat is brimming with such
nail-biting and unanticipated consequences: Willi’s secretive plotting to steer
the survivors back to his Nazi supply ship he knows to be nearby while lying he
is charting their quickest course to Bermuda, utilizing a compass he claims not
to possess and refraining (for some time) from revealing he can speak English
(conversing solely in German with Constance – the only survivor worldly enough
to know a language other than her native tongue); Willi’s insidious
manipulation of the beleaguered and ailing Gus, made a cripple at his hands,
then encouraged to drink the sea water; hastening his delusional dehydration
and allowing Willi to simply toss him overboard while the others are asleep;
Willi’s shockingly unanticipated brutal demise, collectively bludgeoned by the
survivors who have succumbed to ‘mob mentality’; his remains tossed overboard,
and finally, the group’s decision to not afford the second Nazi in their midst
the same consideration, especially after he attempts to hold them hostage with
a water-logged pistol.
Unlike
Hitchcock’s other ‘drawing room’ thrillers primarily confined to a single set (Rope – 1948, Dial ‘M’ for Murder, and, Rear
Window – both in 1954), Lifeboat
is more a series of character-driven impressions about the war and our
survivors’ personal motivations to keep body and soul together outside the
usual conventions dictating a plot-driven thriller proceeding from points A to
Z with the rest of the alphabet invariably intervening. The real terror in this
struggle is not to be hatched in the threat of capture by another Nazi salvage
ship looming on the horizon, but by the subtler unearthing of conflict between
passengers from disparate walks of life who otherwise would never have
encountered one another on their supposed ‘routine’ transatlantic crossing. We
really get to know the characters inhabiting this lifeboat; each distinctly
drawn with the utmost attention paid to their plausibility and plight as
survivors, credibly forced to endure these perils of the sea. Camaraderie turns
to skepticism and constantly shifting alliances; then, outright antagonism,
ever so cleverly massaged back into focus by Jo Swerling’s brilliant
re-imagining of Steinbeck’s original story.
And Hitchcock never once allows the audience to play favorites. Not one
of the passengers is free of self-doubt or self-pity; harboring less than
altruistic principles towards the group, while superficially attempting to ‘remain above it all’. The more brazen of
this ensemble grit and then bear their teeth, revealing their contempt before
withdrawing in wounded dismay.
Lifeboat opens with a close-up on a billowing smoke stack, the
frantic alarm of a ship sinking fast, almost drowning out composer, Hugo W.
Friedhofer’s pulsating score as the main titles scroll up the screen. From
here, Hitchcock pans down into the debris field; the unusually calm and
fog-laden surface of the sea riddled in remnants from the luxury liner only
just slipped beneath its surface; a crate of oranges, a newspaper, a crumpled
deck chair and then, almost as nonchalantly, a body lying face down. We move
into a nearby lifeboat – population: one. Constance Porter, looking as though
she just stepped out of a fashion magazine, immaculately tailored in fur and
unexpectedly quaffed via Central Casting, adjusting her pride along with her
lipstick as she hears the subtle cries of others who have survived this deluge.
In short order, Constance pulls engine room crewman, John Kovac to safety;
along with leading industrialist and personal friend, J. Rittenhouse, wireless
radio operator, Stanley ‘Sparks’ Garrett, U.S. Army Nurse, Alice MacKenzie,
ship’s cook, Jo Spens and Mrs. Higley; a young Brit-born mother, practically
catatonic, except in her devotion to the dead infant still nestled in her arms.
Last to be hauled in like a salt mackerel is Willi; who at first denies he
either can speak or understand English. Cleverly, Constance eventually whittles
the truth out of him. He is not a crewman as initially thought, but Herr
Kapitan of the Nazi U-boat who gave the order to sink their liner and was, in
this assault, mortally wounded herself, forcing him to abandon ship.
While
Rittenhouse, already careworn and rich, and Constance, clever and enterprising,
take the torpedoing in stride (indeed, Connie is elated to have captured the
whole ugly sequence of events on her portable movie camera – pictures to match
a story of survival she is already craftily spinning in her brain and hopes to
report upon once they are ‘officially’ rescued), Kovac is sickened by the
notion Connie plans to profit by the occasion with a juicy ‘first-hand’ account
for media consumption). Practically by accident/on purpose, he manages to
dislodge Connie’s camera from her grip; the film dropping to the bottom of the
sea; later to be accompanied by her typewriter as the crew economize their limited
space. Kovac is unnerved by the fact only Constance is able to converse with
Willi, who has yet to admit to all he can speak English. Gus, badly wounded in
the leg during the attack, begins to ramble on about ‘Rosie’ – the girl he left
behind and hopes – against hope – to be reunited with; a real broad, according
to Kovac, who flashed her stuff all over town to anyone who would look.
Ever-loyal, Gus makes Kovac take back his insinuation Rosie is a loose girl. He
also rather sheepishly confesses to having changed his name from Schmidt to
Smith to hide his German heritage after war was declared. At first binding Gus’
wound, Alice later makes a further inspection, only to discover a grave
infection has set in. The leg will have to come off. At approximately this same
juncture in the plot, Mrs. Higley – having come to terms with the death of her
infant son (his body earlier cast upon the waters) – quietly drowns herself
while the others are asleep under Rittenhouse’s supposed watch.
Willi reveals
to the group he can speak English. He further offers his services in the amputation
of Gus’ leg. Kovac gets Gus drunk to drown out his pain as the cutting begins.
Hitchcock deftly gives us the impression of an amputation taking place; the
survivors (all except Sparks, who is steadying the boat in choppy waters),
tightly forming a circle around Gus as Willi crudely heats a knife with Kovac’s
lighter and the ruthless hacking into soft flesh and dense bone begins.
Afterward, Gus is lucid but still very much ailing. He begins to sneak sea
water into a canteen to satisfy his thirst. Observantly, Willi allows Gus to
poison himself with this salt water, leading to his further dehydration,
dementia and eventual physical enfeebling; enough for Willi to casually push
him overboard while the others are asleep. Earlier, Gus had noticed Willi
hoarding rain water in a hidden flask. With their own supplies destroyed during
a hellish storm at sea, Willi might have shared his water with the group.
Instead, he has been plotting their demise one by one. After Gus’ death is
revealed by Willi as a supposed ‘suicide’ the survivors rush him in an outburst
of rage; bludgeoning Willi to near unconsciousness and throwing him overboard;
Rittenhouse smashing Willi’s fingertips with Jo’s boot as he attempts to cling
to the side of the boat. Nearly beaten into defeatism, the survivors spy a
German supply ship on the horizon. Reasoning it is better to be taken prisoners
of war than to die alone on the high seas, everyone is pleasantly stunned when
the Nazi vessel is blown out of the water by a fast-approaching Allied frigate.
As they await legitimate rescue, the account of their past several days’ ordeal
is writ large across each of their faces; their lack of emotion suddenly
directed at a fresh pair of hands clinging to the side of the boat; another
Nazi officer pulled from the most recent wreck at sea. Rittenhouse orders that
the Nazi be tossed back into the sea. Constance reasons the young Arian is “only a baby”, but Rittenhouse wisely
points to the pistol being drawn on them from the man’s vest, adding “…the baby has a toy.” Unwilling to go
through a similar set of circumstances, Jo disarms the Nazi who disbelievingly
asks, “Aren’t you going to kill me?”
to which Kovac cynically replies, “What
do you do with people like that?”
Lifeboat ought to have been another sparkling jewel in
Hitchcock’s crown, as it remains a tautly scripted and expertly played piece of
suspenseful melodrama from start to finish; meticulously crafted, and even more
unanticipatedly peppered in some astute summations and the master’s lighter
touches, including, perhaps, Hitch’s most ingenious cameo – shown as the
‘before’ and ‘after’ image on the back of a newspaper ad for the fictional
wonder weight loss drug, Reduxo. The ad was so convincing, Hitchcock reportedly
received hundreds of letters from the public inquiring how they could get their
supply of Reduxo. Hitchcock’s initial idea for a cameo was to be seen floating
face up as a corpse amongst the debris. As this proved possibly too morbid for
then modern sensibilities and, in fact, lacked good taste, Hitch’ settled for
the former ‘appearance’ in print,
although he would later be seen precisely as a body floating along the Thames
for a trailer to promote Frenzy
(1972), his second to last picture. The asking price for Hitchcock’s loan out
to Fox was steep; Selznick acquiring several actors, technicians and the rights
to three stories Zanuck owned in exchange. Hitchcock’s preceding reputation as
a master craftsman was well taken by Zanuck who, ostensibly, planned to make
more movies with Hitch’ after Lifeboat’s
success. Instead, Zanuck’s cold feet in the face of such overwhelming
negativity heaped upon the movie by critics ensured Hitchcock would never again
see the inside of a 2oth Century-Fox sound stage.
Possibly,
Zanuck held Hitchcock personally responsible for Lifeboat’s failure, or rather, its implicated pro-Axis stance. The
idea for the movie had, in fact, been all Hitchcock’s doing; the director
hoping to secure the literary prowess of A. J. Cronin, James Hilton or Ernest
Hemingway to write the script. Ultimately, Hitch’ settled on Steinbeck as his
literary muse; the author’s prolific novel, The Grapes of Wrath, transformed into a startlingly profound movie,
personally supervised by Zanuck in 1940. Initially, Steinbeck aspired to write
a novel and sell the rights to Fox for a larger sum. Ultimately, Zanuck made
the author a generous offer to buy an outline for a story deemed ‘inferior’ by
Steinbeck’s publishers; the price - a cool $50,000; the ‘novella’ version
eventually appearing in the Nov. 1942 edition of Collier’s Magazine; but
credited to Hitchcock and Harry Sylvester after Steinbeck asked his name be
stricken from the project over what he perceived to be a fouling
misrepresentation of ‘the negro’ in
his original story. Eventually,
Hitchcock would bring in a small army of other writers to massage the details
and appease Steinbeck – enough to get his credit reinstated as ‘original screen story by…’; the other
talents including Hitchcock’s wife, Alma Reville, MacKinlay Kantor, Patricia
Collinge, Albert Mannheimer and Marian Spitzer. In the waning hours just prior
to shooting, Hitch’ also brought in the legendary, Ben Hecht to rework the
ending.
Outlining his
preferred camera angles from a litany of storyboards and a miniature of the
lifeboat, complete with maneuverable figurines, the actual shooting of Lifeboat proved a minor marvel: four
full-sized lifeboats employed, some in tanks of water, others, mounted onto a gimbal,
rocked against a projected plate shot independent of the action taking place in
front of it with water effects added later and the cast perpetually assaulted
by spray hoses to simulate rough seas. Apart from Tallulah Bankhead – a
favorite and personal friend of Hitchcock – everyone else abandoned the usual
coda of Hollywood-ized glamour for the grunge look; the cast made to appear
gaunt, half-starved and on the verge of a collective nervous breakdown. The
perennially damp conditions took their inevitable toll; infections and other
illnesses repeatedly delaying the shoot. Lifeboat
was shot from August 3rd to November 17th 1943;
William Bendix replacing actor Murray Alper in the eleventh hour with barely 48
hours to prepare for his part. The film’s original cinematographer, Arthur
Miller also had to bow out. At one point, Tallulah Bankhead suffered a bout of
pneumonia and Mary Anderson struggled through an undisclosed illness that
almost forced Zanuck to recast her part. But perhaps the most terrifying near
casualty involved Hume Cronyn, accidently sucked under by one of the activators
stirring the tank waters into a frenzy of waves; the actor cracking two ribs
and narrowly avoiding being drowned as nearby lifeguards dove in to free Cronyn
from his restraints.
In the end,
time has been very kind to Lifeboat’s
reputation. Even so, today the picture remains less well-known, even by
Hitchcock aficionados, primarily due to its considerable absence from both the
big and small screens in the intervening decades since its very limited general
release. Indeed, when the first ‘video’ craze for nostalgia hit in the early
1980’s, CBS/Fox Home Video resisted releasing Lifeboat to VHS, not entirely to avoid further controversy, but
rather, because inspection of the surviving archival elements revealed Lifeboat had not weathered the passing
decades nearly as well as some of Fox’s other vintage product. Worse, when the
studio elected to purge its own backlog of original print elements in the late
1970’s (rumored to have unceremoniously dumped everything else into the
Pacific), it rather idiotically retained only a poorly contrasted dupe from
which further prints could be derived; the dupe already several generations
removed from the original camera negative and suffering the ravages of a litany
of age-related artifacts, as well as considerable mold and water damage. The
net result: no way to go back and improve upon the ragged quality the movie has
existed in ever since. I have no doubt modern digital restoration tools might have
had a more positive effect on the image derived for Kino Lorber’s recently
minted Blu-ray; but no – Fox has not done anything to subtly tweak these
severely flawed elements.
So, set aside
all hope of seeing an impressive 1080p image. What’s here looks about as
competently man-handled as Fox Home Video’s DVD release from 1998. The image
is, throughout, softly focused and occasionally hazy, with distinct water and
mold damage amplified by Blu-ray’s capacity to highlight texture and defects in
the inherent elements. Contrast remains loopy, if slightly less bumped than
before. Grain is exaggerated and, at times, very thick to marginally
distracting. Not good, folks! Not good at all. Miraculously, the audio elements
are infinitely more pleasing than the visuals; generally clean, clear and subtly
nuanced in DTS 1.0 mono. Extras have all
been ported over from Fox’s DVD SE of Lifeboat
and include two independent audio commentaries; one from Drew Casper, the other
by Tim Lucas. We also get excerpts of Hitchcock’s interviews with Francois
Truffaut and a truncated ‘making of’
with reflections from Pat Hitchcock, Hume Cronyn and others. Honestly, for a
Hitchcock movie, Fox ought to have moved heaven and earth to gussy up this
print. It will never be perfect, thanks to the previous regime’s obtuse and obscene
shortsightedness. But at least it could have been a marked improvement over the
aforementioned DVD. Instead, what is here is a regurgitation of the DVD image,
merely bumped up to a 1080p signal. Either way, Lifeboat is a must see Hitchcock movie. At 97 minutes it packs in a
ton of richly evolved character development with Hitchcock’s inimitable zest
for creating some very disturbing dread within our survivors – not only to face
the very real prospect of dying at the mercy of Mother Nature, but equally, to
be saved and face a world still imperiled by war. Great stuff! Crummy transfer.
Buy accordingly.
FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)
4.5
VIDEO/AUDIO
2
EXTRAS
3.5
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