North by NorthEAST

Hitchcock’s films of the forties are, by and large, fairly slow and languid films. A critic named Lindsay Anderson said that they eventually “came to a full stop” (around “Notorious,” which Anderson didn’t like. Poor fellow. He was wrong, but he went on to direct "O Lucky Man" and "If" to make up for it.)

I’m not sure its “bad” that Hitchcock’s forties films are rather slow. A movie like “Notorious” may unwind rather leisurely, but the plot is crisp and the forward motion is good.

Still, twice in the forties Hitchcock fell back on his hellbent-for-leather narrative style of his British thirties spy chase thrillers. Both were forties WWII thrillers: “Foreign Correspondent” and “Saboteur.” Alike in their speed and invention, they are quite different in their look and feel -- and settings ("FC" is a European romp; "Saboteur" an All-American chase nightmare.)

Though both of those films are “action-packed” and move fast, “Saboteur’ is more clearly in the tradition of “The 39 Steps”, with a regular guy accused of a crime he didn’t commit, and electing to chase spies while being chased by the police.

Hitchcock would return to “The 39 Steps” one more monumental time, with “North by Northwest,” top stars Cary Grant, James Mason and Eva Marie Saint, Technicolor and VistaVision, Bernard Herrmann, etc.

But “Saboteur,” in between its two more famous similes, don’t get no respect.

It’s likely mostly because the stars are Robert Cummings and Priscilla Lane (actually, she’s billed first though his Barry Kane is the protagonist of the story.) And the villain is a fine but lower-down Otto Kruger (instead of James Mason.) Hitchcock wanted Gary Cooper, Henry Fonda, or Gene Kelly(!) for the male lead, and Barbara Stanwyck or Joan Fontaine for the female one.

“Saboteur” rather seems to follow its “B-leads” with a plot that moves fast, and Universal Studios production values which, in 1942, weren’t considered the best of Hollywood.

But “look closer”:

The screenplay is NOT an unintelligent one. It may be rife with 40’s boogie-woogie lingo (and dig the jitterbuggin' hepcat at the society ball!) and, sometimes, the air of an Abbott-and-Costello 40’s radio-mystery comedy like “Hold That Ghost!” (particularly in the later New York City sequences), but the villain is wonderfully erudite, and upper-crust writers like Dorothy Parker and Peter Viertel contributed to the script. (Viertel was dramatized in Clint Eastwood’s “White Hunter, Black Heart” and played by Jeff Fahey of “Psycho III” for you trivia buffs.)

Hitchcock rather apologized to Francois Truffaut that “Saboteur’ had “too many ideas’ and moved too fast on them. But Hitchcock was actually rather setting the pace for the action movies of today – which are CRAMMED with action ideas.

Meanwhile, back at “Saboteur”:

Universal was the “House of Horrors” back in 1942, and more than one analyst has pointed out that the movie has the FEEL of “Frankenstein” and “The Wolf Man” (if not quite “Dracula.”) In perhaps an “ode to his studio,” Hitchcock even inserts a scene in which the hero meets a good blind man in a mountain cabin (see: “Bride of Frankenstein,” “Young Frankenstein.”)

Some of the Hitchcock set-pieces here are quite good: the opening fire at the airplane factory (harrowing in its depiction of sabotage); the shootout at Radio City Music Hall (where “North by Northwest” would open many years later); the intense physical struggle of Cummings and rodentoid villain “Frank Fry” (Hitchcock pal Norman Lloyd) in the radio van as Fry tries to blow up the ship; and…

…above all, the climax on the Statue of Liberty which, hindsight tells us, is a nice “bookend” to the Mount Rushmore climax of “North by Northwest,” without being like it at ALL.

Rushmore is a sequence of thunderous music, chases, action, fights. Lady Liberty is a Hitchcock tone poem composed of what critic James Agee called “Hitchcock’s air pockets of silence,” as Frank Fry’s life hangs by a literal thread…and he loses it. (Hitchcock regretted that the hero wasn’t hanging in danger…but who among US would crawl out on the fist of Lady Liberty?) I like how Hitchcock arranges the shots -- different angles, different sizes -- into "visual music" ...but without music. (Though have you notice how Bernard Herrmann-like the score is when the Statue of Liberty is first shown?)

The key dramatic scene in “Saboteur’ has to be the verbal showdown between the over-articulate, power-mad rich man Charles Tobin and the regular-Joe Barry Kane. It’s a gripping scene, beautifully shot by Hitchocck at the peak of his powers.

David O. Selznick loaned Hitchcock out for “Saboteur’ and got on his case NOT to make such “frivolous” entertainments for Selznick. Hitchcock was formally schooled in the “important” filmmaking of the day.

But “Saboteur” was a big, big, hit, and Hitchcock seemed to have learned lessons from it that paid off with the great “North by Northwest.”

Still, you can’t watch “North by Northwest” all the time, so try “Saboteur” instead some time. You’ll be glad you did.

And why on earth did Hitchcock end this movie with the title, “Finis”? Did he already know the French would soon worship him?:

P.S. Priscilla Lane's rather a dish -- and a Boogie-Woogie-Bugle-Girl of a Hitchcock Blonde. I like her in this and as CARY GRANT's fiancee in "Arsenic and Old Lace."

P.P.S. Hitchocck would make one more movie on his "forties Universal loanout": "Shadow of a Doubt," the very next year. A more disparate "Hitchocck pair of movies" you'll never find. The second one is small in scope and quiet in setting, with the emphasis on character over action. Though the 40's jitterbug ambiance is there, too.