Lifeboat (Alfred Hitchcock, 1944) (Patreon)

[NOTE: I have decided to focus only on Hitchcock this month. I will turn my attention to Satyajit Ray in May.]

A fascinating film centered on social dynamics, Lifeboat nevertheless seems to have been widely relegated to Hitchcock's B-column. But then, I guess with a filmography like that, there are going to be some tough calls regarding taxonomy. Reading about Lifeboat, I was surprised to learn that at the time of its release, some critics felt that Hitchcock and screenwriter Jo Swerling provided too sympathetic a portrayal of Willi (Walter Slezak), the German U-boat captain. This perhaps tells us less about the concrete aspects of the text, and is more indicative of the fog of war. 

Released just one year before the Allies' victory, Lifeboat wades right into the thick of wartime consciousness. On the one hand, the fact that Willi does not openly spout Nazi ideology could make him seem uncharacteristically human. He does perform a successful surgery, amputating Gus's (William Bendix) gangrenous leg, which also reminds viewers that Willi had a civilian life prior to the war. At the same time, Lifeboat makes no attempt to disguise his treachery. We are shown very early on what the other characters are not: that Willi is concealing a working compass. So while the survivors take up various argumentative positions regarding Willi's trustworthiness, we always know what the truth really is.

In a way, this distinction is crucial, since it provides an external frame for the survivors' ethical deliberation. Kovac (John Hodiak) is right that Willi should not be trusted. But the upper-class members of the group, in particular -- journalist Constance (Tallulah Bankhead) and industrialist Rittenhouse (Henry Hull) -- are willing to give the German the benefit of the doubt. This speaks to their worldliness, since they are the two characters most lilkely to have encountered Germans outside the context of the war. But it is also an implicit criticism of their liberal broadmindedness. They are willing to give the Nazi captain enough rope to hang them all.

Mitigating this disparity are figures who might be said to represent the middle-class values of democracy and fairness. Sparks (Hume Cronyn), the radio engineer, and Alice (Mary Anderson), the medic, ultimately come to agree with Connie and Ritt, but this has less to do with Willi himself and more to do with ideals of due process and international law. They believe it is not their place to kill Willi, and he should be turned over to the authorities. And while ship's porter Joe (Canada Lee) is reluctant to offer an opinion on the matter, he generally shares the view of the working-class occupants, Kovac and Gus. The point is subtle but clear; Joe too is working class, and while his daily experience of racism is something he is forced to negotiate everyday, Willi the Nazi offers an unambiguous, concentrated embodiment of that bigotry.

Beginning with the quickly sinking smokestack of the ocean liner, Lifeboat communicates with terse, economical visuals. Given the admittedly primitive models and back-projection, the whole film could easily be staged as a play without losing a great deal. But Hitchcock uses the film frame quite strategically. Shifting alliances are depicted with different groupings of the occupants within the tiny space, making Lifeboat a kind of experiment in group portraiture. The various people thrown together (the classic "bottle episode") may have radically divergent worldviews, but when survival is on the line, they come together unequivocally. This is in stark contrast, of course, to Willi, who is usually at the periphery of the frame and, eventually, all alone at the bow, tirelessly rowing to his own destination.

If there is a significant flaw in Lifeboat, it has to do with character development. Certain behavioral shifts, such as the sudden romance between Connie and Kovac, or Ritt's outburst when the card game is blown overboard, are clearly meant to suggest that people reveal their true selves in life-or-death situations. Connie's concern with her makeup when the Allied vessel is in view, likewise, seems to imply that once out of danger, we tend to revert to our former selves. This all works theoretically. But there is such parsimony in Lifeboat's 95 minutes that we don't get enough of a definitive arc for anyone. The script leans heavily on the class positions of the characters, which prevents the shading that might have made Lifeboat a top-tier masterpiece. But then, audiences in 1944 thought Willi was rendered in shades of gray, so what do I know?