The lifeboat

Movie
German title	The lifeboat
Original title	Lifeboat
Country of production	United States
original language	English
Publishing year	1944
length	96 minutes
Age rating	FSK 16
Rod
Director	Alfred Hitchcock
script	John Steinbeck Jo Swerling Ben Hecht
production	Kenneth Macgowan for 20th Century Fox
music	Hugo Friedhofer
camera	Glen MacWilliams
cut	Dorothy Spencer
occupation
Tallulah Bankhead : Constance 'Connie' Porter William Bendix : Gus Smith Walter Slezak : Willi, German submarine commander Mary Anderson : Alice MacKenzie John Hodiak : John Kovac Henry Hull : Charles D. 'Ritt' Rittenhouse Hume Cronyn : Stanley 'Sparks' Garrett Canada Lee : George 'Joe' Spencer Heather Angel : Mrs. Higgins William Yetter Jr .: German shipwrecked man
synchronization

The Lifeboat (OT: Lifeboat) is a war drama directed by Alfred Hitchcock, filmed in 1943 and premiered in 1944 .

action

After a German submarine and an American ship torpedoed each other during the Second World War , nine travelers and crew members drift disoriented on the Atlantic in a lifeboat . Shortly afterwards, they fish a tenth shipwrecked man out of the sea, a German named Willi, who claims to be a sailor of the submarine that has also sunk, but in reality its captain .

The initial hostility towards Willi turns into cautious trust when he takes care of a wounded American sailor and proves to be very useful in other ways. Because he is the only one in the boat who has sufficient nautical knowledge to safely navigate the castaways to the Bermuda Islands . With his convincing manner, Willi seems to dispel the mistrust of the others almost completely - until it turns out that he secretly has a compass and is heading for a German supply ship instead of the Bermuda Islands. In the end, Willi is overwhelmed and thrown overboard and the approaching supply ship is sunk by an Allied ship.

backgrounds

With The Lifeboat , Hitchcock made a third film in 1943 after The Foreign Correspondent (1940) and Saboteure (1942), which deals with the Second World War raging in Europe. David O. Selznick loaned this film to 20th Century Fox , where he largely had a free hand. The film is based on Hitchcock's old idea of ​​having an entire film play in a very confined space ("in a phone booth") - instead, it is now acting in a small lifeboat on the Atlantic Ocean.

For the elaboration, Hitchcock first wanted to win Ernest Hemingway , whom he met shortly after his arrival in America in 1939 and who was very fond of Hitchcock's films. Hemingway thanked for the offer, but canceled due to scheduling reasons. Hitchcock now suggested John Steinbeck , who created a few scenes and a script , but then left the project because he saw no possibility of the drama unfolding due to the limitation to a single location. Eventually the script was written by Jo Swerling , but the dialogues were completely rewritten by Hitchcock himself before filming. Ben Hecht finally came up with a few ideas for the final scene.

The central thesis of the film is the realization that democracy is threatened with extinction as long as the Allies do not jointly defend themselves against tyranny. Instead, disagreement, jealousy, discouragement and indecision would lead straight to ruin. The film tried to depict this using a microcosm in a small lifeboat. It was therefore important for Hitchcock to work out the different characters - their motives for action as well as their attitude in the face of impending, but uncertain danger.

The tension that lasts until the showdown results from the fact that the viewer remains in the dark for a long time as to whether Willi is a good-natured person or a Nazi villain. In the attitude of the other boat occupants towards Willi and in their behavior towards one another, the film holds up a mirror to the “free world”, whose actions are determined by pure self-interest. When it is almost too late, the inmates realize that they have fallen for Willi and throw him overboard. Immediately before they are rescued, they fish up another German shipwrecked man, who they let live.

When the film hit theaters in early 1944, some critics, including Dorothy Thompson and Bosley Crowther of the New York Times , accused it of supporting the Nazis' superman theory by portraying the German as being smarter, more determined and more purposeful than the quarreling people from democratic countries. In fact, however, the statement is clearly directed against Germany and a clear call to the “free world” to take decisive action against Germany. Adolf Hitler disliked the role of Walter Slezak in this film and had his father Leo Slezak sentenced to a fine of 100,000 Reichsmarks .

synchronization

In Germany, the film was only shown in a subtitled version until the German dubbed version was made in the 2000s , because the tension in the film is based on the linguistic barrier between the English-speaking boat crew and the German Willi. To illustrate this language barrier, the German castaway Willi speaks Dutch at the beginning of his appearance in the German dubbed version .

role	actor	German Dubbing voice
Constance "Connie" Porter	Tallulah Bankhead	Sabine Jaeger
Gus Smith	William Bendix	Jörg Hengstler
Willi, German submarine commander	Walter Slezak	Florian Krüger-Shantin
Alice MacKenzie	Mary Anderson	Silvia Missbach
John Kovac	John Hodiak	Erich Rauker
Charles D. "Ritt" Rittenhouse	Henry Hull	Eberhard Prüter
Mrs. Higgins	Heather Angel	Peggy Sander
Stanley "Sparks" Garrett	Hume Cronyn	Peter Flechtner
George "Joe" Spencer	Canada Lee	Michael Iwannek .

Reviews

• “The film was very controversial. Some critics thought it was a masterpiece, while Dorothy Thompson said, 'I'm giving the film three days to get out of town'. For some, the film was a piece of communist propaganda, while others thought it was a brilliant patriotic play. Hitchcock himself found the latter to be true. (...) Thanks to its realism, the film survived the time well. It is still as convincing today as it was at the time of its premiere. ”- Robert A. Harris and Michael S. Lasky in Alfred Hitchcock and his films (OT: The Films of Alfred Hitchcock). - Citadel film book from Goldmann, Munich 1976, ISBN 3-442-10201-4 , p. 128
• “Sharply contoured type portraits and great creative sophistication characterize the film.” - Lexicon of international film
• "(...) a chamber-style, dramatic film about questions of humanity and tolerance in extreme situations, played convincingly, even if propaganda compromises reduce the effect (...)" (Rating: above average) - Adolf Heinzlmeier and Berndt Schulz in Lexicon "Films on television "(expanded new edition). Rasch and Röhring, Hamburg 1990, ISBN 3-89136-392-3 , p. 676
• “Psychologically as well as formally and technically a masterpiece.” - Hamburger Abendblatt

Awards

• 1945: Oscar nominations
  • "Best Director" - Alfred Hitchcock
  • "Best Camera (black and white)" - Glen MacWilliams
  • "Best Original Screenplay" - John Steinbeck

• National Board of Review Award
  • Top ten films of the year
• New York Film Critics Circle Award
  • Best Actress - Tallulah Bankhead

The German Film and Media Assessment FBW in Wiesbaden awarded the film the rating particularly valuable.

Cameo

Since the film takes place entirely in a small lifeboat on the sea, it was not possible for Hitchcock, as in most of his films, to include a brief cameo as a passerby or the like. At the time of filming, Hitchcock also made strenuous attempts to reduce his weight from around 120 to less than 90 kilograms. So he came up with the idea to record these efforts in Das Lebensboot: The viewer discovers him in a newspaper advertisement for a diet - twice in full height in profile, once before the diet and once after - with obvious success. According to Hitchcock, after the film was released, he received hundreds of requests for the fictional diet supplement "Reduco". Almost 20 years later he told François Truffaut that his first idea was to drift through the picture as a body of water, which was discarded in spite of the minimal dangers in the studio film pool. In fact, due to the subject matter and seriousness of the film, this was never a realistic alternative. Hitchcock realized his macabre desire finally almost 30 years later in Frenzy - even if only in a trailer and in the long shot , of a life-size doll and -echten " gedoubelt ".

See also : List of Hitchcock's cameo appearances

literature

• Robert A. Harris, Michael S. Lasky, eds. Joe Hembus : Alfred Hitchcock and his films (OT: The Films of Alfred Hitchcock) . Citadel film book from Goldmann, Munich 1976, ISBN 3-442-10201-4

Web links

• The lifeboat in theInternet Movie Database(English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The lifeboat at the German synchronous file
2. ↑ The lifeboat. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed August 30, 2017 .  
3. ^ Allmovie Awards
4. ↑ IMDB Awards