Well Deserved Praise

From my favorite movies..

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

This is a bit of a rarity, a Hitchcock film I've not seen before. I discovered Hitch in my teens and became obsessed, watching and loving everything I could get my hands on. How this slipped the net I'm not sure, but I'm mighty pleased I've caught up. Nearly 75 years old, this is still faultless with a wonderful cast of characters, stuck in a lifeboat after a U-Boat takes out their WW2 ship. The dialogue is masterful and the delivery more so. Tallulah Bankhead is particularly mesmerising. The camerawork simple, before the trickery and techniques of later films, but still amazingly effective. Packed with drama, tension and a story deeper than the ocean they find themselves alone on.

Released during WWII, Alfred Hitchcock's "Lifeboat" is a wonderful study of human nature. Seven survivors of a ship torpedoed by a German U-boat are joined by a German survivor. Without many resources, their ultimate goal is survival.This wonderful cast of eight portrays characters from every part of society--from the upper crust woman (Tallulah Bankhead as Connie Porter) adorned with fur and diamonds to a ship's laborer (Canada Lee as Joe Spencer), from a nurse to an industrialist. But the differences between appearance and reality are illuminated as the story presents hardship after hardship.Issues of class, race and politics are highlighted as Hitchcock strips away the veneer of society's rules and peels back the layers that make up the personality of each character. The film asks if you can truly know anyone. It suggests that people behave differently in times of emergency and extreme stress. But are we merely seeing the true nature of people in such moments?Given world circumstances, the German character (Walter Slezak as Willi) becomes the symbol for an entire nation and its political philosophy. Or is he merely a man who also suffers at the hands of his misguided military leaders?The boat becomes its own "country", where concepts of governance are tested. This is an important part of the story, for it shows that one's political preferences reveal one's true beliefs about the nature of man.With such a brilliant script (from a story by William Steinbeck), an excellent cast, and Hitchcock's shining stewardship, it is no wonder that "Lifeboat" is a film that will never lose its luster or its relevance.

When we find out that Gus, who loves to dance, has a wound in his leg, we know right then he is doomed. Sure enough, the leg becomes gangrenous. As it turns out, Willi was a surgeon before the war and says that he can amputate. Gus does not want to have his leg removed, because he is afraid that he will lose Rosie, the girl back home whom he loves. He fears that she might not want to marry him if he comes back without one of his legs, especially since she loves to dance as much as Gus does. To make matters worse, Gus has a rival, Al Magaroulian, whom Rosie used to date and who is also a good dancer, even though fallen arches have kept him out of the war. Gus is afraid Rosie will go back to Al if he has his leg removed. But eventually he relents, and Willi performs the surgery.Later in the movie, while everyone is sleeping lethargically from dehydration, Gus catches Willi sipping a drink of water from his flask. To keep Gus from telling the others about the water, he pushes Gus overboard. When the others awaken from hearing Gus's cries for help, they realize Gus has drowned, and they ask Willi why he didn't do something. Willi does not, of course, tell them that he pushed Gus overboard to keep him from talking. Instead, he tells them that Gus voluntarily jumped overboard and that he thought it would be best not to do anything about it, saying, "You can't imagine how painful it was to me. All night long, to watch him turning and suffering and nothing I could do for him…. The best way to help him was to let him go. I had no right to stop him, even if I wanted to. A poor cripple dying of hunger and thirst. What good could life be to a man like that?"Yes, German Nazis are evil, but are we all that good? Consider Willi's justification for letting Gus drown. The lie that Willi thinks will be an acceptable justification for "allowing" Gus to drown is actually repugnant to the other survivors, who listen to his words in horror. And we who watch this movie are likewise repulsed by Willi's callous remarks. But now let us ask ourselves why those who made this movie put this into the story. We cannot say it was to show that Willi was evil. We already knew that before he killed Gus. But if a murder was needed to really drive home the point, it was not Gus that had to be murdered. For example, it could have been Canada Lee that saw Willi sneaking a drink of water and who was then murdered by Willi and thrown overboard. Willi could then have tried to justify why he didn't save Canada by saying, "Like the Jews, Negroes are inferior. They are better off dead and the world is better off without them." That would definitely make it clear just how evil Willi is.One could come up with other ways of dramatically showing how evil Willi is, but there is no need. The point is that those who made this movie had a special reason for killing Gus off beyond making it clear that Willi was evil. They did it to make those in the audience feel better. The audience then and we today would have been uneasy if the movie had ended with Gus still alive in that lifeboat. Sure, Rosie might have not cared about Gus's leg. And she might have married him because she truly loved him. In a movie like "The Best Years of Our Lives" (1946), Hollywood could make sure that things would turn out that way. In that movie, Wilma (Cathy O'Donnell) agrees to marry Homer (Harold Russell) despite the fact that both forearms have been replaced by prostheses and despite the fact that her parents want her to break off the engagement. But in real life, we know things do not always work out that way. Rosie and Gus were not even engaged. Instead of being like Wilma, Rosie might have tried to put a good face on the situation for a couple of months and then broken up with Gus and gone back to Al Magaroulian.And so, rather than leave the audience suspecting just such an outcome for Gus and Rosie, which would have been depressing, those who made this movie killed Gus off. In this way, the audience was able to leave the theater feeling much better about the movie than if Gus had lived. You might even say that Gus's death was necessary for there to be a happy ending. But does that not imply that those who made the movie as well as those who watched it then and those of us who watch it now are essentially in agreement with Willi when he asked, "What good could life be to a man like that?"We shake our heads No. We insist that Gus could have gotten over the loss of Rosie and dancing, that he could have lived a full, rewarding life nevertheless. But if that really were the way we all feel, Gus's death would not give us a sense of relief. Those who made the movie and those of us who watch it are all complicit in wanting Gus's death so that we can all feel better.Of course, there is a big difference between committing an actual murder and merely writing a story in which a man is murdered, between saying the dead man is better off and saying that the death of that man makes the story better. And so, whereas Willi was guilty of a horrible crime, we are only guilty of liking a movie better because such a crime takes place.And yet…, and yet….

Lifeboat is one of those films that takes place only in one spot. A handful of random survivors are thrown into a tough situation together and are stuck with each-other for a length of time. In this case, a freight ship has been sunk and the survivors gradually accumulate in a lifeboat. We meet them one by one and start to learn what's going on. We get first impressions of them but the characters gain more depth as the movie continues. And wouldn't you know it, one of the Germans from the U-Boat which also went down has to join the party as well.Some of the people are dominating whereas other are submissive, some are upper class while others are workers. It's a microcosm of society at large. They all have stories, personal things they reveal when they feel like it. They are not caricatures but have details to their personalities - subtle quirks and contradictions. They can be reasonable and civilised but also argumentative and confrontational. They face moral choices and it's the thoughts and feelings they go through that are more important than their final decisions. We are free to assess their choices and behaviour. We see a more intense, raw side of humanity in these kinds of situations.It's impressive that the film manages to be so engaging even within it's claustrophobic environment. It's not artificial entertainment either. We are naturally interested in the characters and whether they will survive or not. Shocks and twists occur at random intervals. New information comes up that creates more drama and tension. We don't know if we can trust the German. We don't know if the boat is headed in the right direction or not. We don't know if a storm might be just around the corner.One part calls for an emergency operation which really had me squirming in a way few horror movies can achieve. The movie doesn't shy away from the simple reality of what is happening. The movie isn't bogged down by clichés, it's confident in the value of real people behaving realistically. I feel like Hitchcock's direction is simple and transparent. He doesn't try to do too much.The actors are all believable and do a good job. Bankhead in particular stands out. She seems arrogant and superficial at first but emerges as mature and reasonable compared to the others. The German comes across as intelligent and calm. Canada Lee plays a dignified African-American in a time when I believe that was rare. It's a shame he's not given more to do in the film. In fact, when the others ask for his opinion on something, he's surprised and taken aback that he even gets to have a say.It's interesting that the movie has practically no music. But the splashing water and swaying boat fulfills that job. It's calming and creates a unique atmosphere. I'm sure a lot could be read into the symbolism of a lifeboat floating in a vast ocean. You could deeply analyse the interplay of different personality types as well. I'm sure there are numerous examples of various psychological phenomena.Lifeboat has many similarities to films like 12 Angry Men and Reservoir Dogs. We don't see the events that led up to the film. Just the aftermath. Characters judge and accuse each-other. Perhaps not everyone's versions of what happened are fully accurate. Someone might be deceiving the others or keeping quiet about something. But really these movies are just a chance to get into the human psyche a bit. To consider extreme circumstances and observe the spectrum of possible human responses. You might not like every character, but then you might like to ask what you would do in the same situation.