Alfred Hitchcock
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Movie Review - Cast & Crew - Dvd Features - Dvd Technical Details - Buy Dvd
The story is first rate. Though Joseph Conrad was never a dramatist, and his
novels were dependent altogether upon his
genius for descriptive writing, Hitchcock captures the tone of the novel and breathes flesh onto the bones of the story [from Conrad's novel The Secret Agent].
It revolves around a secret organization
which hires people to plant bombs in crowded
sections of London, and though the reason for their
desire to systematically blow up innocent persons is not made clear, it has to be remembered that the film was made in 1936 when the German Third Reich's threats were like dark shadows over Europe; somehow real, frightening, terrifying, but not yet realised or understood in their entirety. By keeping away from the reasons for the bombing, Hitchcock replicates that vague fear and leaves the audience uneasy at not being able to understand the make-up of the threat. Quite brilliant. Conrad had written the book around 1920 when the fear of the Third Reich was not born so this device is solely down to the great director.
Oscar Homolka's performance of the harassed victim of the sabotage organization
into whose clutches he has fallen is a brilliant
piece of character acting. Sylvia Sydney captures the confusion and bewilderment of the wife slowly discovering that her husband is not all he makes out to be. The tension on the bus ride to Piccadilly Circus with Desmond Tester as Sydney's kid brother unknowingly carrying a live bomb is unbearable in the extreme. Without giving the plot away, the climax of the scene sees Hitchcock pulling no punches. How many directors even today can say the same? No easy kop out for Hitchcock.
Mr. Verloc is a member of a gang of foreign saboteurs who are plotting to put a bomb on an underground train. tragic events follow as the messenger carrying the bomb, together with the occupants of the bus he boarded, are killed when the device explodes...
In mentioning Sabotage in an article for Film Weekly prior to the film's release, Hitch asserted that 'this title will be changed'. He'd adopted it as he had announced the film under the title The Hidden Power (a pun on the blackout at the beginning of the film as well as the unnamed organisation who employ Verloc), though it seems the only working title actually used (briefly) was a rather lurid I Married A Murderer.
The restaurant to which Ted takes Stevie and Mrs Verloc is the famous Simpsons in London, one of Hitchcock's personal favourites.
Hitch tried to get Robert Donat for the role of Ted Spencer, but when he wasn't available he accepted the impossibly handsome John Loder.
The film is based on Conrad's The Secret Agent, but Hitchcock couldn't use that title a his previous film was Secret Agent.
Hitchcock wanted to show London's East End as he'd known it as a boy, so he had an entire replica street built, complete with fully equipped shops.
The street was built on a slight incline so that traffic could roll by silently, with the sound to be added later. Hitch also had a working tramline made, which is on screen for only a few seconds.
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