The first of Hitchcock's experimental single-set films.

Rating: Null/10 (28 November 2001)

Excluding the fact that half of THE LADY VANISHES is set on a cramped train, LIFEBOAT is the first time Alfred Hitchcock experimented with setting an entire film in a single cramped set. (ROPE and REAR WINDOW did the same trick) This time, the cramped set is a lifeboat full of American and British survivors of a passenger ship sunk by a German U-Boat. The time is World War II, and the film serves as a microcosm of the world's feelings towards the enemy and ourselves. These survivors pick up one more person at sea, a German, (frightfully played by Walter Slezak) one of the people who sunk the boat. Hitchcock gets fantastic performances from his cast- Tullulah Bankhead, John Hodiak, Henry Hull, Hume Cronyn, Canada Lee, Heather Angel, William Bendix. Well worth catching.