An easy country to lose your way in

Alfred Hitchcock’s Saboteur soft-pedals the nationality of enemy agents targeting US defense sites during World War II by making the bad guys well-heeled homegrown fascists.

Messy democracy in profile: Esmeralda the bearded lady (Anita Sharp-Bolster), Siamese twins Minnie and Marigold (Jean Romer and Laura Mason), The Major (Billy Curtis), Titania, “The Little Human Mountain” (Marie LeDeaux), and Bones “The Human Skeleton” (Pedro de Cordoba) of Russell Brothers Circus.

Saboteur’s Mr. Freeman (Alan Baxter), Mrs. Sutton (Alma Kruger), and Charles Tobin (Otto Kruger) are among those “prominent citizen[s], widely respected” who believe that “the competence of totalitarian nations is much higher than ours”.

Not that they didn’t exist: this wartime film’s propaganda message juxtaposes a presumed audience of everyday Americans “helpful and eager to do the right thing” with those who would opt for a totalitarian regime as “a more profitable type of government” that “gets things done”.

Kind, blind Uncle Phillip Martin (Vaughan Glaser) who “can see a great deal farther than most people” listens attentively as his dog (Shadow) and new guest Barry Kane (Robert Cummings) anticipate visitors: “This is an easy country to lose your way in. That’s one of its charms.” 

Hitchcock used a similar plot in The 39 Steps (1935) and Young and Innocent (1937), later North by Northwest (1959) and Frenzy (1972): an ordinary man embarks on an extraordinary adventure to clear his name after authorities wrongfully identify him as a criminal actor. He enlists the help of a young woman who resists him at first. The couple bring ruthless foes to justice with the aid of sympathetic strangers. Law enforcement is often hostile, clueless, and several hot steps behind.

Saboteur may be the closest Alfred Hitchcock came to a Hollywood Western.

The ordinary man here is Barry Kane (Robert Cummings), an aircraft factory worker accused of starting a fire as an act of sabotage in the fictional Stewart Aircraft Works in Los Angeles. News reports claim that the fire resulted in one death—Kane’s best friend Ken Mason (Jeffrey Sayre), with injuries to other workers and a half million dollars’ worth of damage to the facility.

Ken Mason (Jeffrey Sayre) and Barry Kane (Robert Cummings) return money to Frank Fry (Norman Lloyd) in Alfred Hitchcock’s Saboteur.

Kane and Mason met the actual saboteur (Norman Lloyd) by chance right before the fire when he dropped his wallet spilling several hundred dollar bills and letters addressed to “Frank Fry”. They helped Fry to his feet and collected his dropped papers. Mason subsequently suspects that Fry is the saboteur when he discovers that there is no record of him having worked at the plant. He recalls the address on Fry’s letters and sets off on his trail. The story hits stride when Kane meets his future ally Pat Martin (Priscilla Lane).

Barry Kane (Robert Cummings) must overcome the misgivings of Pat Martin (Priscilla Lane) to enlist her help to catch the bad guys and clear his name.

“My, they must be terribly in love.” Alfred Hitchcock reportedly groused about Saboteur but it is among his more playful films, with running gags and jeux d’images.

The “fifth-columnists” (secret enemy sympathizers—a term first used in the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s) include ringleader Charles Tobin (Otto Kruger), a glib sophisticate operating from a Colorado ranch, and Mr. Freeman (Alan Baxter), who heads the ring’s operations. Freeman strangely volunteers to the hero that as a child he had “long, golden curls”; that he always wanted a daughter and wonders whether his son should have them too. Mrs. Sutton (Alma Kruger), a New York socialite and philanthropist, gives the orders, like the demonic matronly figure in Hitchcock’s later Notorious (1946).

Typical in Hitchcock films, “respectable people” often are hostile to the hero: “What’s the matter with you, sir? You’re drunk. You’re not even dressed!”

Kane: “We’re among the biggest bunch of fifth columnists in this country!” Jitterbug (Gene O’Donnell): “We got a wag in the joint. The guy’s tryna rib me.” Date: “Aw, he’s slinging you curves.” Jitterbug: “Beat it out, son! Beat it out."

Dorothy Parker shared a credit on the screenplay and reportedly has a “woman in car” cameo. Parker turns up long enough for a drink but not a cup of coffee. The snappy dialogue provides relish. But it is Hitchcock’s masterful camera eye influenced by German and Russian films of the silent era that tells his stories in images. The most common pattern is: the camera shows an actor and the audience an opportunity or a threat; the actor reacts; that action moves the narrative. This occurs sometimes in simple, others in more intricate series of specific shots.

A series of visual clues leads the protagonists and viewers to a sabotage target (Hoover Dam) in Alfred Hitchcock's Saboteur.

For instance, Pat Martin is held captive in a room high in a Rockefeller Center office. She looks down on streets far below. She sees a white cardboard desk blotter. She takes up a pen to write a “help” message to drop to passersby below. The pen is out of ink. She hesitates. She takes a lipstick from her purse and writes her message in large bright letters. She makes the message disappear when one of her captors enters the room. The captor sees her applying lipstick to her lips. He leaves. She opens the window enough to drop the message. The blotter gets hung up on the way down, but makes it to a huddle of cabbies. The cabbies read the message and look up to see a blinking light in an office window. In a subsequent series of shots, a chase leads viewers into a movie theater and the onscreen bedroom farce becomes an interactive experience.

Interactive media: an onscreen bedroom farce comes to life—and death—when police follow a sabotage suspect into a cinema at Radio City Music Hall in Alfred Hitchcock’s Saboteur.

Hitchcock reportedly groused about Saboteur but it is among his more playful films, with the usual Hitchcock jeux d’images in which the camera often wickedly belies the characters' words, and several running gags (e.g., the leading lady and snakes). The censors apparently made Hitchcock replace his original cameo, in which he appeared using sign language to make an inappropriate proposition to a woman, with a neutral shot in front of a storefront for “Cut Rate Drugs”. 

Jeux d’images: a highway billboard reminds Barry Kane (Robert Cummings), who thumbed a ride east with a truck driver (Murray Alper), that the law is on his trail.

A billboard comments on Barry Kane’s (Robert Cummings) budding relationship with Patricia Martin (Priscilla Lane) whom he just met and resists his charms at first.

A billboard comments on Barry Kane’s (Robert Cummings) future prospects among US fifth-columnist Mr. Freeman (Alan Baxter) and his henchmen who at first take Kane for one of them.

Saboteur 1942 U.S. (109 minutes) Universal Pictures. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock; screenplay by Peter Viertel, Joan Harrison, and Dorothy Parker from a Hitchcock story; cinematographer Joseph A. Valentine; special photography by John P. Fulton (uncredited); editing by Otto Ludwig and Edward Curtiss (uncredited); music by Frank Skinner; produced by Frank Lloyd (uncredited), associate producer Jack H. Skirball.

Denouement on the Statue of Liberty: a sleeve is only as strong as its sewn seam.