Citizen Kane, or 'the surest test of the American heart.'

Rating: 6/10 (23 June 2007)

Conventional critical thinking holds that 'Shadow of a Doubt' was Hitchcock's first truly American film. After all, his first few projects in Hollywood consisted of two English Gothic mysteries with all-British casts, a romp through Europe with a token Joel McCrea, and an obscure screwball comedy that he did as a favour to a friend. How conveniently they pass over 'Saboteur', a rather clumsy piece of wartime propaganda with none of the critical standing of Hitchcock's subsequent masterpiece. The small town setting of 'Shadow of a Doubt' is warmly welcomed as authentic, if subversive, Americana. On the other hand 'Saboteur', the argument goes, is just a reworking of British classic 'The 39 Steps', with Hitchcock displaying a tourist's eye for landmarks like Radio City Music Hall and the Statue of Liberty.
Nuts to that.
'Saboteur' is as authentically American as anything Hitchcock would later achieve; if critics failed to recognise the United States he showed them, it may say more about their preconceptions of a meritocratic New World than any failure on his part. After all, this is an America where an honest working man, doing his part for the war effort, can find his life falling apart through the machinations of the rich and idle; where the overworked (the lorry driver), the disabled (Pat's uncle), and the outcast (the circus folk) know that they must help their fellow victims in the face of what seems like routine police harassment; and where the wealthy can make troublesome proles who gatecrash their charity benefits 'disappear'. The use of Romain's 'The Death of a Nobody' seems highly pointed. Soda City, meanwhile, is a ghost town haunted by the worst times American workers had known - the great depression (contemporary viewers could not have missed the significance of it having been abandoned at the end of the 1920's).
Meanwhile, the requisite patriotism for Hollywood films of this period is neatly pricked by Hitchcock and his writers. Whilst everyone insists on bleating on about the great American virtues, Pat's uncle and the circus folk quietly assert an alternative paradigm of American life. Pat herself - 'little Miss Liberty, carrying her torch' - only becomes the heroine once she learns to put aside her zealous urge to be a good citizen. In this context, the symbolism of the Statue of Liberty - as hope for the dispossessed, rather than an icon of patriotism - seems sharper than critics would allow.
The casting of Robert Cummings and Priscilla Lane as the leads, as opposed to the bigger names Hitchcock was growing accustomed to, seems rather apt in a film about little people caught up in the grinding wheels of war and espionage. Cummings' Barry Kane will never be anybody's favourite Hitchcock hero, and when the director brought him back for 'Dial M for Murder', there was a merciless irony imposed on the character. Lane is better, particularly as the film progresses, but she's solid rather than interesting; her character is just too nice. The villains are, however, fantastic, particularly Otto Kruger as the charmer who scarpers the country. His delight in both his granddaughter and his treachery are a joy to behold. There's a savage irony in that, of all the villains, it's only hired lackey Fry (the small variety, one presumes) who gets his comeuppance at the climax. As usual, the rich get clean away.
All the critical contortion to overlook this film is, perhaps, understandable. The writing is highly inconsistent, with exposition ladled all over the place and the propaganda elements laid on with a cement mixer, to the point that it suffocates some of the finer scenes, such as the encounter with the circus folk (compare with the relatively elegant 'Foreign Correspondent', or the dramatically tighter 'Lifeboat'). The set pieces at Tobin's ranch, Mrs Sutton's party, the Radio City Music Hall (with the uncannily inappropriate laughter of the audience at the violent on screen murder) and the Statue of Liberty (a reminder of the days when the French were seen as forerunners of American ideology, rather than cheese-eating surrender monkeys) are master classes, but a lot of the rest of the film seems poorly paced and indifferently acted.
But, oh, what a title sequence.