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WARTIME
HITCHCOCK
Hitchcock made several movies
during World War II that explicitly deal with the theme of war and that
served to function in the war effort. In 1944 Hitchcock made two short
propaganda movies (in French) for the British Ministry of Information:
Bon Voyage (1944) and Aventure Malgache (1944). Hitchcock made three regular
features about the war that are to be seen as his "little effort" in the
war. These are Foreign Correspondent (1940), Saboteur (1942), and Lifeboat
(1943).
In Foreign
Correspondent, a journalist is sent to Europe to report on the prospect
of war. Through a series of hazardous adventures, he finds out about a
spy ring and secures the rescue of a political leader whom had been kidnapped.
Saboteur
is a movie about a man who is wrongly
accused of an act of sabotage.
Over the course of the story,
the man not only clears his name
but also helps to unmask
the real saboteurs.
In Lifeboat,
an American ship and a German U-boat are involved in battle and sink. Survivors
from the two ships gather in a lifeboat: an international journalist, a
rich businessman, a radio operator, a nurse, a black steward, a sailor,
an engineer, and the commander of the German submarine. The German commander
tries to steer the boat to a German-held port, but the other passengers
find out and kill him. Eventually, they are rescued when an American ship
arrives.
Hitchcock's war movies as
well as Rope break with his quest for liminality. These films do not present
much ambiguity in moral and/or legal respects and instead clearly and resolutely
demarcate guilt from innocence. There are villains who are to be exterminated
and there are heroes who will do so.
The kidnapped man
in Foreign Correspondent is a victim in all respects. His kidnappers are
evil without question or qualification.
In Saboteur the wrongly accused
man can shake off his ill-fortune and expose the real saboteurs. In his
fight, he is joined and supported by all members of society, manifested
most clearly by a group of circus artists who help him.
Lifeboat is a miniature of
war-time America, wherein all --mand and woman, rich and poor, black and
white-- are united against the Nazi evil.
Mostly, however, Hitchcock's
films present a very different picture. Guilt and innocence shift and change.
In two films, I believe, Hitchcock even went as far as to portray and justify
a radical reversal of central principles of the social order.
Mathieu
Deflem
DeflemM@yahoo.com
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.This
page is part of Hitchcockonline.org.
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