![]() ![]() Kapitan Willi (Walter Slezak) is shown to be stronger and healthier than his enemies. Hitchcock does not appear in person, but we see his image in the before and after photographs of an ad for weight loss.Īt the time of its release, Lifeboat was controversial, because many thought that it offered a sympathetic portrayal of a U-boat captain, and one who was a fanatical Nazi. #Lifeboat cast how toThere is the other difficulty for Hitchcock – how to include his cherished cameo performance, a signature of his movies. Lifeboat is unique in Hitchcock movies in that it has no music score after the opening credits – the only music heard in the film is that of singing, and a flute played by a couple of the survivors. The water tank was the most problematic element of the production, and there were a number of accidents and illnesses caused by spending time in cold water. It was shot in a studio, using stage fog and four lifeboat models, one for rehearsal, one for close-ups, one for long-shots, and one for use in a giant water tank. ![]() These survivors are a mixture of passengers, crew, and a German officer who was on the U-boat that sank their ship, before being destroyed in its turn by Allied forces. With the exception of a few establishing shots, almost the entire action of the film takes place on the titular boat which contains the survivors of a German U-bomb attack. Nonetheless I think it is time to reappraise Lifeboat as being a good solid middle-range Hitchcock. Such limitations put heavy demands on the abilities of the scriptwriters and actors, and there are bound to be weaker moments. There are certainly weaknesses in Lifeboat, as is often the case in films that rely too heavily on talking rather than action. #Lifeboat cast movieCritics on the whole did not respond well to Hitchcock’s attempts to explore the possibilities of making a movie where much of the action takes place in one or two settings. Notably most of these films are not among his most highly-regarded. Other examples include Rope, Dial M for Murder and Rear Window. Lifeboat is one of a number of Hitchcock’s experiments in making a film using a limited setting. Nonetheless much of his original story was retained. Steinbeck even tried to get his name taken off the credits. Admittedly Steinbeck objected to changes made by Hitchcock, which he felt constituted slurs on organised labour, and which reduced the one African American character to a more stereotypical figure. This lack of renown may seem curious, as the movie has a decent cast, and even a script by a famous writer, John Steinbeck. Perhaps the least well-known of those films is Lifeboat, an under-rated wartime movie about the survivors of a German U-boat attack. #Lifeboat cast seriesThe Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present the Oscar-nominated Lifeboat in a Dual Format edition (Blu-ray and DVD), accompanied by Hitchcock’s two French-language wartime shorts, Bon voyage and Aventure malgache.Alfred Hitchcock received five Academy Award nominations for Best Director, but never received the Oscar. With a cast including Shadow of a Doubt veteran Hume Cronyn and the extraordinary, irrepressible Tallulah Bankhead, this “picture of characters”, as François Truffaut aptly termed the film, oscillates dazzlingly between comic repartée and white-knuckle suspense – a perfect example of “the Hitchcock touch”. But the motivations of the German submarine captain (played by Walter Slezak) on the eponymous craft might extend beyond mere survival… Based on an unpublished novella by John Steinbeck (written on commission expressly to provide treatment material for Hitchcock’s screen scenario), Lifeboat found the Master of Suspense navigating a course of maximal tension – in the most minimal of settings – with a consistently inventive, beautifully paced drama that would foreshadow the single-set experiments of Rope and Dial M for Murder.Īfter a Nazi torpedo reduces an ocean liner to wooden splinters and scorched personal effects, the survivors of the attack pull themselves aboard a drifting lifeboat in the hope of eventual rescue. ![]()
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