Saboteur is the story of a wrongly accused man on the run. We've seen these stories many a time from The Fugitive to Dark Passage. Hitchcock himself explored it in films across his career like The Lodger and North By Northwest. There is something truly satisfying about these stories as they play into our persecution fears and usually provide a cathartic release in their vindicative narratives. What makes this one fascinating is the way Hitchcock explains the paranoia of war time.
As his hero Barry Kane runs across America while trying to prove his innocence he encounters the kind of fear and othering that comes along with the us-vs.-them mentality that wars engender. Interestingly when he does find an openness to his plight it comes from those already seen as outsiders, a kindly blind man, a circus train full of "freak show" performers. It is the rich and powerful who are determined to persecute Kane and the most "American" who are the quickest to turn out to have bad intentions. We see a villain being a kindly grandfather character. Saboteur makes us question who we see as moral.
There are strong themes of democracy vs. fascism, with the fascists not necessarily being the Nazis (who at the time were terrorizing the world with war but many westerners may not have understood yet the whole horror of Nazism) but the Americans that use the war to push for an anti-democratic ideals. It's the rich and powerful plotting to bring about the downfall of democracy by fearing Americans into supporting it. Saboteur is remarkably prescient.
The ending comes on a little fast and I'm not sure it resolves things. Perhaps that is all part of the plan, the story isn't wrapped up nicely in a pretty little bow. Instead the threat lingers which is perhaps more frightening. The film has a stunning finish to match it's amazing opening set piece, a stylish and ominous start to what ends up being a truly entertaining film.
Saboteur
Starring: Robert Cummings, Priscilla Lane, Otto Kruger
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Writers: Peter Viertel, Joan Harrison, Dorothy Parker
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