Customer Reviews

Sabotage

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This is a wonderful old film, one of Hitchcock's most terse. Terrific acting, simple clean plot but POOR DVD transfer; grainy image and very thin audio. Avoid this until someone releases a better print. So far so bad with the HITCHCOCK COLLECTION.

Released in 1936, SABOTAGE is a first class example of what makes Alfred hitchcock the master of suspense. As a die hard fan of Hitchcock, I will admit that I originally bought this film on the bargain shelf to complete my collection. After one viewing I had an new favorite Hitchcock film. The plot is simple...London is being hit with acts of sabotage and the police suspect the owner of a small movie theater is responsible.An undercover agent tries to get information from the mans unsuspecting wife. The plot may be simple but the complex emotions that are revealed as the story progresses are not. Sylvia Sydney is outstanding as the wife and does an outstanding job in her portrayal of a woman whos entire world is crumbling around her, and she often does it without uttering a single word. Hitchcock is known for the style of his movies and trust me, this movie is one of his most stylish. Student filmmakers should be required to watch this movie to learn how to create suspense and intrigue. If you have ever seen and loved a Hitchcock movie, watching this movie will show that his unique sense of emotion and humor was fully intact even in his earlier films. I will end this by just saying...WATCH this movie.

This moody thriller from Hitchcock's British period blends a somber and tense storyline with a budding romance borne from circumstance; something that would become a staple of his American films. While it may be just a tick below "39 Steps," "The Lady Vanishes," and "Young and Innocent" from the same period, it isn't far behind.

One of the reasons it reaches the level it does is the lovely Sylvia Sidney. She is simply fantastic as a girl in a dangerous and somber situation whose smile ignites the screen every single time it happens. She is married to Oscar Homolka who seems harmless enough but in fact is a saboteur.

British police are hot on his trail and as Ted (John Loder) tries to discern whether Sidney is involved or just an innocent bystander, he falls in love with the sweet girl who takes movie tickets and cares for her little brother Stevie.

The audience falls for Sidney too in this film based on Joseph Conrad's Secret Agent. The photography of Bernard Knowles adds atmosphere and tension to some truly exciting moments in Charles Bennet's screenplay. The film starts slowly but gradually draws the viewer in because they care about Sidney.

When the sabotage escalates to a bomb intended for Picadilly, Sylvia's husband uses young Stevie to deliver it. But he is delayed and the viewer is on the edge of their seat watching the clock tick down while Stevie rides the double-decker, the outcome very much in doubt. Sylvia's fate will be in doubt also as an impulsive act will have Ted trying to shield her from the consequences because he loves her.

This film has been in need of a quality release for a number of years, and is finally getting one. A commentary with Hitchcock author Leonard Leff, a Peter Bogdanovich interview with Hitch, a restoration comparison and still gallery are included on this long awaited release. According to the studio, it will also be close captioned, and have French and Spanish subtitles for those who need such. A great ending makes up for the slow start in a film carried by Sidney's bee-stung lips and smile like sunshine. Hitchcock fans don't want to dismiss this one from his British period. You'll become a fan of Sidney's after watching this one.

Sabotage is one of Hitchcock's great British films. Based on Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent (He already made a film called The Secret Agent so he had to use another name.)

This was a pre WWII film that foretold the war. Oscar Homlika plays a German émigré living in London. He is married to a sweet younger woman (Silvia Sidney) who is looking after her young brother. For the brother this is a dream come true, living above a movie cinema.

Carl Verlock is working with a group of German agents in London but his wife and her brother are ignorant of his activities. But Scotland Yard has begun to suspect him. Carl is only interested in passive sabotage where no one is directly hurt (like causing blackouts.) But he is asked to plant a bomb. Reluctantly he does. But when things start to go wrong and he cannot deliver it himself, he enlists his young brother in law to deliver the bomb. The brother gets delayed by a parade and is killed by the bomb.

Little by little, Mrs. Verlock figures out that Carl is involved with her brother's death and takes justice into her own hands.

This is one of the films that Hitchcock received early fame with. It helped establish him as a master of suspense.

I must say that this print is a little blurry at times but I have seen copies on AMC which are just a bad. This is an early film and British. Most restorations and preservation of films have been with early Hollywood films. Therefore, this is probably the best collection of existing prints.

Despite the flaws, this is a must see movie.

DVD EXTRAS: None

Bit slow to begin with, but the pace improves as the movie goes on. Poor Stevie didn't deserve to get blown up, but sadly if he hadn't have been the movie would not have had the impact that it did. Needs a few viewings to truly appreciate it, but that seems to be the way with most HITCHCOCK movies.
My main complaint is that the overall picture and sound quality of the movie is very poor. I realise that the movie is 70 years old at the time of writing, but if it's been around this long, it's fair to assume it'll be around for another 70, so why doesn't somebody put up some money and restore it! And while ther'e at it, why not do the rest of his early (British) catalogue

Based on the novel The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad, this early Hitchcock film is about Mr. and Mrs. Verloc who own a movie theater. They live in a house attached to the theatre with Mrs. Verloc's little brother, Stevie.

The movie opens with the power in London going out. People are screaming. In a quick cut to the power supply place, we learn that it must be sabotage done with sand. Then it's cut to the movie theatre where Mrs. Verloc is trying to keep the patrons down in the candlelight, telling them they can't afford to give their money back. Mr. Verloc sneaks past, without her seeing him.

Upstairs in their house, Mr. Verloc washes his hands off and we see the sand in the bottom of the sink. The movie progresses from there as we learn of Mr. Verloc's sabotage and his orders to put a bomb on Picadilly Street. Because he's being closely watched by a Scotland Yard detective posing as the next-door vegetable store owner, Mr. Verloc sends Stevie to drop the "package" (bomb) off in a cloak room at Picadilly Street.

We watch Stevie in horror...

One of the best scenes of the movie is when Mrs. Verloc picks up the carving knife at the dinner table and we see her anger rising against her husband. The whole scene lasts perhaps a minute or so, but is completely silence. There is no conversation, just superb acting.

Oscar Homolka, who plays Mr. Verloc, is an excellent actor, just sometimes hard to understand because of his accent. Sylvia Sidney, in the role of Mrs. Verloc, demonstrated her superb acting ability in this tough role.

Hitchcock has always regretted the scene where we watch Stevie carrying the package (or bomb) throughout the city as it built up the suspense to a tremendous level before a huge let-down. I think I agree with him, though some critics think it is perfect the way it stands.

The filming is classic Hitchcock and he makes it seem, after a point, something like a dream. The characters seem to be well-developed and the ending abrupt but ironic. A movie worth watching-even if it was made in 1936!

The genius of Hitchcock is best seen in his early British films. Back in the 1930s, working with relatively unknown actors and actresses, low budgets, and seemingly rather straightforward scripts, Hitchcock's eye for detail, unique mastery of cinematography, framing, and lighting, and most of all his unsurpassed ability to generate suspense put him in a directing class all by himself. Speaking of suspense, Sabotage packs a particularly nasty punch in that department, resulting in what I consider one of the most memorable cinematic sequences in my own personal experience. Those excruciating moments, and the events they set in motion, make Sabotage a disarmingly powerful, surprisingly emotional film.

The story, adapted from a Joseph Conrad novella, centers around a seemingly harmless cinema run by the Verlocs, foreigners seemingly well-adjusted into life in London. Karl Verloc (Oskar Homolka) is apparently supposed to be German (he sounds a lot like Bela Lugosi, so I initially took him for an eastern European of some sort), while his wife Sylvia (Sylvia Sidney) and her brother Steve (Desmond Tester) came over from America a year earlier. The film opens with a blackout of London, a happenstance we quickly learn to be an act of sabotage committed by Mr. Verloc. Scotland Yard, already suspicious of the man, has a man working undercover at the neighboring grocery (John Loder), but he doesn't have enough evidence to nab the guy. As he cozies up to Mrs. Verloc to see if she knows anything, the mysterious group Verloc is reluctantly working for make plans for a much larger demonstration of their presence (using terrorism to distract England's attention from what is already taking place on continental Europe in this year of 1936).

As you can see, the viewer knows exactly what is going on and exactly what is planned for the near future, but rest assured that Sabotage is in no way lacking in the suspense department. The critical scenes in the movie are rather excruciating and even a fair bit shocking, setting up an ending that might look rather clichéd on paper but proves quite fascinating onscreen - in large part due to Hitchcock's masterful direction. Raw emotion radiates off the screen as Hitchcock proves, even at this relatively early stage of his career, that he is much more than a mere master of suspense.

There are probably still some purists out there who feel that the work of Alfred Hitchcock really began to falter after his move to America in 1940. At the time this was quite the deal in the world of film, and there were more than a few critics and industry insiders who from then on thought of Hitchcock as a bit of a sellout. Hitchcock had earned his reputation in England directing films that, while low on budget, were more than high on suspense, excitement, and talent. Their financial limitations and removal from the Hollywood system gave the films a sparse, yet brilliantly photographed and desperately urgent feel uncommon to the banality of many American productions. Among these early films lies "Sabotage," a film slightly scant on story and somewhat emotionally muddled, but nevertheless at times terribly suspenseful and honestly affective.

The movie's story is somewhat ambiguous and the film itself seems almost aware of its unimportance, only bothering to offer a few scant lines of dialogue to explain the motivation of the saboteur. Karl Verloc (Oskar Homolka) is the owner of a cinema in London who also commits acts of sabotage for a terrorist organization, in, it is explained, the hopes of drawing attention away from larger plots afoot on the continent. Who Verloc is working for, or for what particular reasons, personal or professional, are never made abundantly clear, but given that the film was made in 1935 and Verloc is a German immigrant, one can assume that the film was meant to serve as a warning of the trouble brewing in Europe. But the film does not seem fully committed to this theme, and the set-up suffers because of it. The film also centres on Verloc's wife (Sylvia Sydney) and her brother Steve, who are unaware of Verloc's little hobby, but soon find themselves swept up in the intrigue surrounding his treacherous dealings. John Loder plays the next door grocer, Ted Spencer, who we soon find out is actually an undercover Scotland Yard detective who keeps tabs on Verloc while making passes at his wife.

Hitchcock is famously quoted as saying that a scene of a man with a bomb under his chair is not suspenseful unless the audience is aware of the bomb while the man is not. "Sabotage" quite literally takes this advice and through its use finds a scene of such tension and anxiety that it truly makes the film. The lead up to this scene in intriguing, and the remainder of the film somewhat devastating (if not a tad jumbled), but the scene of Steve's trip to the London Underground is among the finest of any Hitchcock film. One of the true virtues of this scene, and of the film as a whole, is the cinematography, which at times is heartily reminiscent of the best of German expressionism. The way in which Hitchcock, along with director of photography Bernard Knowles, frames and lights his close-ups is often masterful, and works to fully render the tension and conflicted anarchy of Verloc and the film as a whole. Watch for the scene where husband and wife talk in close-up confinement, until she leaves and abandons him and the camera pulls away to show Verloc alone in the now noticeably spacious frame, and you will see Hitchcock's eye for the expressiveness of the medium. It is with such touches that Hitchcock manages to bring an incredible amount of value and intrigue to a film of such basic plot.

The end of the film gets lost a bit in its rather forced romantic sub-plot. Spencer's final perusal of Mrs. Verloc comes across as highly inappropriate, but considering her reaction I do believe that this sentiment was somewhat intended. Sidney is marvelous in this latter part of the film and scenes such her looking for her brother in a crowd are heartbreaking. The finale is a bit too deus ex machine to blend in seamlessly, but the film has enough honest emotion and unapologetic suspense to more than make up for its shortcomings. I have seen only a handful of Hitchcock's UK films, but with them one sees a Hitchcock without the stars, without the large budgets, without the exotic locales; a Hitchcock totally dependent on the sense of scenario and tremendous talent behind the camera that first earned him his reputation. I think most would agree that Hitchcock went on to prove his critics wrong with an illustrious and always interesting American career, but with films such as "Sabotage", where his talents are revealed at the roots, you can see why the purists were initially skeptical.

Great story but jeez its amazing how far special effects have come.
Seriously, its a tense story and a rather brutal one for 1935. You will enjoy it whether you are a Hitchcock fan or not. If you fail to enjoy it well....thats your fault.
I am guessing Winston Churchill enjoyed this one as it fanned the flames of Anti German sentiment just after Hitler had come to power and was released during the year of the 1935 Berlin Olympics which showed off the German prowess of the time. A good flick to help tilt the Britains toward concern over the power rising to their East.

Hitchcock made this brilliant thriller the same year he made "The Secret Agent" and although the above is a great movie, "Sabotage" is much better.

In this movie a woman finds out that she is married to a saboteur. Unfortunately she finds out too late. You see it seems that Mr. Verloc has sent her brother out on a small errand. (Here comes the spoiler- IF YOU DON'T WANT IT RUINED FOR YOU QUIT READING) What the kid (yes, it's a young child) doesn't know is that he is delivering a bomb against the clock. Things get in his way and surpriseingly in theis movie, the suspence ends with a shock. Indeed the kid gets blown up.

Now, in this scene Hitch uses the camera and the use of montage quite geniously. It really is quite a spectacle.

When Mrs. Verlock finds out and her husband is less than greiving she gets the sudden urge to kill him. The scene with the knife on the table is great!

This is a must for thriller fans!!! You seriously need to check it out.