Sabotage (1936)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | sabotage |
| Original title | sabotage |
| Country of production | Great Britain |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1936 |
| length | 74 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Alfred Hitchcock |
| script |
Charles Bennett , Ian Hay (dialogues), Helen Simpson (dialogues), Alma Reville |
| production |
Michael Balcon , Ivor Montagu for Gaumont British Picture Corporation |
| music |
Hubert Bath , Jack Beaver , Louis Levy |
| camera | Bernard Knowles |
| cut | Charles Frend |
| occupation | |
| |
Sabotage is a thriller by Alfred Hitchcock in 1936, which in the novel The Secret Agent (The Secret Agent) by Joseph Conrad is based.
action
Carl Verloc lives a double life . He runs a cinema in London with his wife Sylvia and their little brother Steve. However, he carries out acts of sabotage at night for a secret organization . Ted Spencer works in the greengrocer next door, but he too has a secret identity. In reality he works as an undercover agent for Scotland Yard and is assigned to shadow Verloc.
Verloc's first major action, an act of sabotage in a power plant that paralyzes the entire metropolis, does not have the desired effect. The Londoners smile at the incident, and he gets a new assignment from the secret organization: He is supposed to meet a bomb maker and pick up explosives.
Spencer becomes suspicious and meets with Verloc's wife Sylvia and her brother Steve for a meal to find out more, but he fails. Therefore spied it the next day a meeting between Verloc and a few Finster Lingen. Clumsily he gets caught and his cover is blown. Verloc is now forewarned. When the package with the bomb arrives a few days later, he doesn't want to take it to the crime scene himself. So he hires little Steve, invents a story and sends him with the package and a few rolls of film to a locker at the train station. He urged him to hurry because the bomb is equipped with a time fuse. The unsuspecting boy wasted time on his way through the streets of London and eventually fell victim to the explosion.
The film can is found at the crime scene, and Sylvia has to learn that her husband is to blame for her brother's death. At dinner she rams a carving knife in his stomach in an affectation. She wants to go to the police and turn herself in, but Spencer, who has fallen in love with her, covers her and lets the only evidence disappear.
background
Sabotage is based on the novel The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad . Since Hitchcock had already used this title for his previous film, he changed the title to Sabotage . Together with his wife Alma and Charles Bennett, however, he edited the template to such an extent that little was left of the original plot.
Robert Donat , the hero from The 39 Steps, was originally intended to play the role of policeman Ted Spencer . Since this was not approved by his producer Alexander Korda , Hitchcock had to make do with John Loder , who, however, according to Hitchcock's statement, did not fit the role and for which some dialogues had to be rewritten. Hitchcock later saw the role's dilemma in the fact that, due to the insignificance of this supporting role, it was not possible to hire a star. Therefore, the audience's sympathies were not unreservedly with Spencer, who clearly interferes in the Verlocs' marriage and woos the wife.
Working with the leading actress Sylvia Sidney turned out to be no less difficult. She came from the theater and was not used to expressing emotions solely through facial expressions and gestures, as Hitchcock's visual narrative style required. She couldn't do anything with Hitchcock's method of filming the film one shot at a time, as she was used to the Hollywood method of long takes that are only cut in the editing room. In the key scenes in particular, when she learned of her little brother's death and eventually kills her husband, she was convinced that she had done a terrible job. When she saw the finished scene, however, she was thrilled: “Hollywood has to find out!” She said proudly.
Sabotage begins with a "mini silent film", a specialty of Hitchcock, in which the initial situation is presented in a few minutes and the main character, Mr. Verloc, is introduced as the saboteur. Another typical Hitchcock element is the connection between birds and impending disaster, which is clearly conveyed here for the first time. Birds or bird cages appear in some of the key scenes in the film. The bomber's accomplice even works in a bird shop.
The sequence of scenes in which the boy transports the package through the city, which he doesn't know contains a time bomb, while wasting time, is the classic Hitchcockian suspense scene, based on which the principle of this kind is based To create tension, to be shown and explained in the most striking way. However, Hitchcock later repeatedly referred to the fact that he actually let the bomb explode as a mistake. This scene was resented by the film at the time. From a dramaturgical point of view, however, this shock effect was necessary to secure the unreserved sympathy of the audience for Mrs. Verloc, who soon afterwards stabbed her husband to death.
Sabotage takes place in the East End of London and contains some well-placed autobiographical allusions. The vegetable shop is reminiscent of that of Hitchcock's parents, the cinema of the cinemas Hitchcock visited in his youth. Spencer and Mrs. Verloc visit Hitchcock's favorite restaurant. Many other small details of street life are inspired by Hitchcock's childhood impressions.
Hitchcock confessed to Truffaut that he ultimately didn't like the movie too much. Apart from a few carefully composed scenes, it is messy and sloppy and "somewhat - sabotaged ". However, apart from the objections about the bomb explosion, the film received a rather positive response from the press. In Brazil, the film was banned on the grounds that it could trigger civil unrest.
In 1996, a remake of the literary material by Joseph Conrad was made under the direction of Christopher Hampton , which was released under the title The Secret Agent .
The film was first shown on German television on October 17, 1978 at 7.30 p.m. on ZDF .
Cameo
Hitchcock walks past the cinema towards the end of the film, just before the detective gets out of the car.
Reviews
- "Hitchcock's staging art reaches an early climax in this work of the English period; he coolly calculates the horror and is not afraid to denounce ideals as clichés." (Rating: 3 stars = very good) - Adolf Heinzlmeier and Berndt Schulz in Lexicon "Films on TV" (extended new edition). Rasch and Röhring, Hamburg 1990, ISBN 3-89136-392-3 , p. 696
- "Exciting thriller from Hitchcock's English period. The audience had a hard time with the unusually icy, perfectly calculated, often even cynical narrative style of the film - and probably also with the fact that Hitchcock so sharply worked out the Janus-headedness of a supposedly" normal "average person . " - " Lexicon of International Films " (CD-ROM edition), Systhema, Munich 1997
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
- François Truffaut : Mr. Hitchcock, how did you do it? . Heyne, 2003, ISBN 3-453-86141-8 (sequence of interviews (approx. 50 hours) by the French director from 1962). Original edition: François Truffaut: Le cinéma selon Hitchcock (Eng. "The film according to Hitchcock") Simon and Schuster, 1984, ISBN 0-671-52601-4
- John Russel Taylor: The Hitchcock Biography , Fischer Cinema 1982, ISBN 3-596-23680-0
- Donald Spoto : Alfred Hitchcock - The dark side of genius . Heyne, Munich 1984, ISBN 3-453-55146-X (German translation by Bodo Fründt)
- Bodo Fründt: Alfred Hitchcock and his films . Heyne Film Library Volume 91, 1986, ISBN 3-453-86091-8
Web links
- Sabotage in theInternet Movie Database(English)
- Sabotage - Download from the Internet Archive (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Release certificate for sabotage . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , November 2004 (PDF; test number: 63 062-a DVD).
- ↑ Filmdienst.de (credits), and Spiegel.de, .