by Laura Lai/ Review
Film’s Title: Lifeboat
Lead Actors: Tallulah Bankhead (Connie Porter), William Bendix (Gus Smith), Walter Slezak (Cpt. Willi), Hume Cronyn (Sparks Garrett), Heather Angel (Mrs. Higley)
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
The movie is based on the novella written by John Steinbeck.
Lifeboat[1] is a psychology movie that presents people’s behavior and thinking in a life-threatening circumstance and in a limited space, such as a lifeboat. The movie presents the story of a group of people who survived their ship being torpedoed by the nazis during WWII. And for the pressure on both the mind and the body to be higher – due to limited space and resources – one of those rescued from the ocean was one of the German crew members who torpedoed the ship.
In the lifeboat, there are just a few characters, of different genders, colors, and professional
backgrounds. One of the characters is Connie (Tallulah Bankhead) a journalist
who first lost her camera, then the tipper, then the suitcase, and in the end,
she lost even a golden bracelet with which they tried and even caught a fish.
And she laughed about all this. It was like Hitchcock would say that laughter is
the best medicine, particularly under such circumstances.
Another character is ‘captain’ Willi (Walter Slezak), who initially pretended that he did not understand any English, while Connie was translating from German. He was just checking whether the rest of the crew could be trusted. He was a lifesaver when amputating Gus’ leg (William Bendix), but also his executioner when throwing him in the ocean for discovering that he had water to drink, while the others were thirsty. Willi played with Gus’ hallucinating mind, actually encouraging him to go overboard. And as if Hitchcock would try to say that what goes around comes around, captain Willi had a similar end. Following an exchange fire between two ships, another German was saved by the survivors on the lifeboat. And it looked like Hitchcock would tell us that history repeats itself.
Lifeboat
is particular not only for a fine presentation of different peoples’ behavior
in survival[2]
circumstances but also for the way Hitchcock decided to do it. First, he chose
very close camera shots – so close shots that the viewer can smell the actors’
breath. J This is hypothetical speaking because nowadays
most of us wear masks to protect ourselves from the spread of Covid-19. Second, he chose a dynamic dialogue, with rare moments of silence, and only one healthy laughter – that of Connie, when she
lost the bracelet.
One such close camera shot is in minute 50, and it focuses on Connie’s face. Basically, the entire screen is her face exposing a natural beauty – a typical beauty for classic black and white movies – where make-up was just a tool to emphasize some face features. Here, Connie used lipstick to keep the focus on her lips, mouth, words, and the entire discussion under the framework of a dynamic dialogue - an original and brilliant idea.
Enjoy the movie!
P.S.: See you in the next review of Hitchcock’s movies!
[1] This is the free version of the movie that I watched on YouTube. The movie can also be found on Amazon.
[2] I started this Hitchcock series practicing film review writing after having successfully completed the course on Academic and Business Writing (click here to view my final paper film review for the course). But these survivors on this lifeboat reminded me of the course PredictionX: Lost Without Longitude that I completed during this Hitchcock film series (click here to read the course review).
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