Hitch Ahoy!

Rating: 8/10 (15 February 2006)

World War II propaganda films say a lot about the societies behind them. Simplistic racial and classist dichotomies abound in Nazi and Soviet films, respectively, because of government demand and audience expectation. In Allied countries, however, democracy required a more subtle, less dogmatic "Why We Fight" approach, one best exemplified in this American wartime drama by British director Alfred Hitchcock.
Tallulah Bankhead stars as jaded newspaper columnist Connie Porter who wears her cynical, relativistic view of life as prominently as her mink coat and diamond bracelet, coming off like a 1940s version of the New York Times' vampy Maureen Dowd with her needling asides and eye-rolling hauteur. CoPo is one of several survivors of a vessel sunk by a German U-Boat, now adrift on a boat with little hope of rescue.
Among the others: A smug businessman, a doughty British radioman, a Brooklyn jitterbugger with a wounded leg, a nurse regretting her adulterous past, an African-American steward with a knack for picking pockets, and perhaps most notably, a survivor from the day's other wreck, that of the U-Boat.
Stereotypes, yes, but the richness of "Lifeboat" in large part springs from the fact they don't always behave in stereotypical fashion. Take John Kovac, the black-gang communist played by John Hodiak. Many commentators claim the film's own socialistic sympathies are in evidence when Kovac makes his loaded barbs at the swells in the craft and urges the German be thrown over, which as the film develops doesn't seem so bad an idea. But Kovac often comes off too heavy for his own good, not to mention less than the exemplar of Comintern rectitude when he receives the amorous attentions of Connie.
Then there's the black guy, Joe (Canada Lee), outsider among outsiders, who stays on the margins, keeps his head down when others bicker, and manages to help out time and again without calling attention to himself, sort of this film's version of Ally Sheedy in "The Breakfast Club." My favorite is the capitalist, Rittenhouse, his name being the film's most obvious Marxist nod. He's full of tiny jokes and deathly banter, used to being appreciated because of his wealth and cloying in his pretenses at commonality, but in general not all that bad a guy. Henry Hull plays him so well you almost think he's the insufferable one, rather than his role. "Call me Ritt." Ugh.
At one point, when Rittenhouse gives his name to Kovac, Connie pointedly adds "Junior" to underline his wealth is inherited rather than earned. As one of the others note: "She certainly has a way of getting at things."
"Lifeboat" garners praise for Hitchcock's compositions within a small space, and moments like the heating of a knife before surgery and the shadow of a sail crossing the face of Walter Slezak as the German show how clever and rich Hitchcock's vision could be. (There's also the all-time best example of Hitchcock's most overrated device, the director's cameo.) But the script by Jo Swirling and Ben Hecht is just as intricately probing, pulling back the covers with each of the characters and finding moments of tension and revelation in the smallest comments. There's enough going on here to reward many viewings. For example, the more we learn about Rosie, William Bendix's girl back home, the more we understand why Connie shakes her head after assuring him Rosie is waiting for him.
Okay, Hume Cronyn's British accent is on a par with Kevin Costner's in "Robin Hood," and the ending does feel ten minutes longer than it should. But "Lifeboat" is a quiet triumph, not only for its technical mastery and deep characterization, but as a propaganda film that faces head on the underside of a mob mentality, the virtues of individuality, and the possibility that the enemy might have the right idea now and then. Hitchcock made better films, but none make me so proud to be an American, a pretty cool trick for a Brit.