Tuesday, February 04, 2014

Tuesday's Forgotten Movies: SABOTAGE

Still watching the Hitchcock films left in this condo.This one comes from 1936. Verloc(Oscar Homolka)is an anarchist bomber in London pre-WWII Sylvia(Sylvia Sidney plays his unknowing wife An undercover police inspector(John Loder) pretends to be a neighborhood shop clerk but is closely monitoring the couple. Also in the household is Sidney's younger brother. There is a lot of suspense in this film, even an early Disney cartoon, Sidney is lovely and Loder makes a great hero. But I could never get past Homolka's performance. Spend five minutes with him and you know he's up to no good. But there are many great scenes and a shocking ending. Worth seeing but I wish Homolka could have played it with more subtlety. Perhaps Hitchcock couldn't bear to not make it clear where his sympathies lay. 

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh, Hitchcock was such a master, wasn't he? So skilled at building suspense.

Anonymous said...

I saw this years ago and thought Homolka was pretty hammy.

Jeff M.

George said...

There's always ambiguity in a Hitchcock film. These early films show how canny he was as a director.

Sergio (Tipping My Fedora) said...

I have always thought this was underrated as it tends to get forgotten among Hitchcock's great rn of 1930s thrillers. I love Homolka but I do know what you mean Patti, there is not much shading there.

Anonymous said...

Based on Joseph Conrad's superb novel The Secret Agent.

Yvette said...

I always shudder at the powerhouse scene of the boy on the bus.