American quasi-remake of the 39 Steps with a few twists, not least of which the Statue of Liberty

Rating: 8/10 (11 August 2008)

It goes without saying that Alfred Hitchcock repeats himself, and he wouldn't want it any other way. Like some great big old rock band that goes out on tour and lays the same songs with only minute variations in the set-list, Hitchcock's films carry so many similarities- not least of which the running "Wrong Man" theme, which was even a title of one film in the 50s- that it's easy to point out how much Saboteur resembles the 39 Steps for good chunks of time. Even more-so than North by Northwest, which I was sure was the next-generation knock-off of 39 Steps, Saboteur posits the everyman hero, played by Robert Cummings, being set-up to take the fall for a murder, and all authorities are on the alert for his presence. He somehow narrowly gets away from a car while in handcuffs and gets through a river, holds up very briefly in someone else's cabin out in rural area, hitches along with an unlikely blonde beauty (Priscilla Lane) who wants nothing better than to turn him in, and then finally the two become both the heroes.
Sound familiar? That's mostly the set-up for Saboteur, and it's sad to say that even with a bigger budget, Selznick and Universal studios backing, and some minor star power, the 39 Steps is still better overall in this variation on a solid Hitchcock tempo. In Saboteur, despite the changes made for war-time pride and the enemies being dangerous threats (i.e. tantamount to terrorists) and very well-acted threats by Otto Kruger and particularly Norman Lloyd, Hitchcock relies a lot on strange supporting turns to keep things interesting on the cross-country trip from Los Angeles to New York. Sometimes this is interesting like with the blind cabin owner, who's also Lane's father. Sometimes it's just ho-hum like with the truck driver (charicature at best). And while Cummings and Lane make a good, typically Hitchcockian couple, Cummings is no Robert Donat, and is only good in that conventional wrong-man hero kind of way (to be fair, it also wasn't Hitch's first choice). A couple of short monologues about war-time pride also feel a little dated, also sadly.
This all said, when Saboteur works, and it often does, it displays its director going to town on expressing his "camera logic", as Norman Lloyd quoted Hitchcock in an interview. Which is to say that everything makes so much sense with the style here, with how to tell the story, that it becomes a wonderful surprise to see how much Hitchcock does experiment, making things just a little more abstract like with the fire near the start of the picture (that shot of the black smoke rolling in on the background is just fantastic), or how he deals with Frank Frye reaching for and finally touching the button and setting off the explosion at the docks. But, without a doubt, it's the last fifteen minutes or so of the movie- from right after the explosion, through Radio City and the dueling gun battle on screen and in the theater, to the ferry to the Statue of Liberty, and then that wildly successful sequence up at the top and clinging on for dear life- that make it something close to a must-see for just cinema lovers in general.
Somehow, Hitchcock has a way with making quintessential sequences like the Liberty Statue, and it even found its way into North by Northwest being close to a collection of the hits. Saying Saboteur isn't one of Hitchcock's best films is taking into account the picture from start to finish as it does have a derivative story and characters, even for the Master. But this also goes without saying that it does contain some of the sharpest direction, and some of the most stunning even-for-21st-century "how did they do that" suspense, in the director's career. 8.5/10