Intelligent drama and you actually have to keep up with it

Rating: 7/10 (25 June 2012)

There was only one true master of 20th century cinema and you can guess who that was. I haven't really found any director who could make so many exciting and interesting films as this brilliant man. Others had their hits and misses, but only he scored time and time again.
Lifeboat, while not as visually exciting as North by Northwest or Psycho is all that high drama should be. Sure, it has tricks up its sleeve and you might get lost if you don't follow what's on the screen, frame by frame.
One minor flaw is that it tries to cram a moral down your throat at the very end, something I would never believe would be in a Hitchcock film but I suppose, that it was a different time in the world from 1939 to 1945. Maybe it was the producers who forced Hitchcock to make this a message picture at the last minute.
Still, it has some great performers like Tallulah Bankhead. I just love her voice. William Bendix as the wounded soldier is quite effective too but the winner has to be Walter Slezak, as the sinister German U-Boat Captain.
There is something that I noticed at the mid-point, involving the death of one of the characters. It leaves a lot of questions and I took little notice to it the first time around. Watch it yourself and you will see how it is never properly dealt with throughout the rest of the picture and that is exactly what Hitchcock intended. Because of that scene, I will say that this was something out of the ordinary at that time, where you were usually treated to a lengthy explanatory sequence about how the whole thing happened. It makes the movie all that more interesting.