With our power back on, finally, my wife and I relaxed yesterday by watching an Alfred Hitchcock movie from 1936–Sabotage, starring Oscar Homolka and Sylvia Sydney.
I’ll do my best not to spoil it for you if you haven’t seen it. It’s well worth a trip to your library or to Redbox.
Sabotage got Hitchcock into hot water with the movie-going public. In many ways, it was decades ahead of its time. The controversy over one scene in particular caused Hitchcock to reconsider his whole approach to suspense. Once you see the film, you’ll understand exactly what I’m talking about.
Homolka plays a movie theater owner who augments his income by performing acts of sabotage: a terrorist for hire. When his unspecified foreign employers want him to plant a great big bomb that will kill a lot of people, he at first turns them down. But his resistance is easily overcome by money. In due course the bomb is delivered to his doorstep, and all he has to do is put it in place before it goes off.
That’s when things get complicated. And the clock just keeps on ticking…
Hitchcock wanted to make a statement about the evil of terrorism–a topic which people in 1936 really weren’t quite ready to consider. He wound up making a statement that was a lot stronger than his audience wanted to hear: but not, more’s the pity, too strong for us in 2012.
Warning: this film is a peek into the darkness of the human soul. Not for the faint-hearted!
I just rented it to watch. Thanks, Paul
Paul Herbert : family of Zimmerman sui juris sovereign living soul, holder of the office of “Bexar County Sheriff” Inhabitant on the land of Texas republic