Saboteur

Fifteen Minute Film Fanatics

Saboteur, released in 1942, feels like it was conceived, written, filmed, and edited in the three days between Pearl Harbor and Germany’s declaring war on the United States. The villains are vaguely “totalitarian” and their goals seem to be mere anarchy rather than the political ends of any specific nation, but they spark the derring-do of a hero who wants to preserve the same things as Superman did: truth, justice, and the American way. Everyone knows that, like another film would twenty-four years later, Saboteur uses the Statue of Liberty in its climax; what many forget is how many terrific moments lead up to that famous fall. Join us for an appreciation of a Hitchcock film that, like Foreign Correspondent, deserves a wider audience, despite Dan’s not thinking it can earn a Howard Hawks Seal of Approval.

There is no shortage of books about Hitchcock: the most recent is Edward White’s The Twelve Lives of Alfred Hitchcock.

Follow us on X or Letterboxd–and let us know what you’d like us to watch! Incredible bumper music by John Deley.

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