Lifeboat (1944)

World War II. Battle for the Atlantic. A ship is torpedoed. Eight people scramble aboard a damaged lifeboat. They're a cross-section of American society, from a common sailor to a tycoon. Seven white, one black. One of the women - a bit unhinged from the London Blitz - jumps overboard after her baby dies and drowns herself. That leaves seven souls. This in itself would be a pretty gripping story. Seven people in one small boat pitted against the entire North Atlantic. Will they survive? Will they reach the safety of America? Or will they succumb to their baser natures, tear each other to bits, resort to cannibalism when they get too hungry? Most other directors would have taken that route. But not Alfred Hitchcock. A bunch of people in a lifeboat adrift on an angry sea wasn't enough for him. He throws in a little something extra, just to spice up the mixture a bit. He adds the enemy to the pot.

Lifeboat begins in media res. We don't meet the people in a cute little montage as they are boarding the ship that will carry them into the war. The ship's funnel is slipping under the water as the credits end. The camera pans across the sea, and we see the ejected detritus of human lives - books, crates, food, clothing, playing cards. Then we see the lifeboat, damaged but still afloat. In it sits Connie Parker (Tallulah Bankhead), completely incongruous in her mink and her perfectly coiffed hair, filming the spectacle with her hand-held camera. Soon she is joined by John Kovac (John Hodiak), a rough-and-tumble seaman. Others come soon. Stanley (Hume Cronyn), the radio operator; Gus (William Bendix), a stoker; Alice (Mary Anderson), a nurse; Charles S. Rittenhouse (Henry Hull), the tycoon; Joe (Canada Lee), a steward; and Mrs. Higgins (Heather Angel), the young mother who takes her own life after having survived the shipwreck. These people don't exactly like each other. They come from various socio-economic backgrounds, and they have been thrown together by the war. If they are to survive, they must learn to work together. And they might just do that. But then Willy (Walter Slezak) arrives. Willy came from the German u-boat that sunk their ship. Now he claims a place on their lifeboat. He says he's just a common seaman, but can they trust him? After all, he is a German and this is war. Willy soon proves his usefulness when he successfully amputates Gus' gangrenous leg, saving his life. After this, the others pretty much accept him as one of their own. After Willy saves every one's lives during a storm, they pretty much let him run the show. Eventually, though, Willy's true colors show through. He pushes the ailing Gus overboard and calmly watches as he drowns. When the others realize what he's done, they turn on Willy en masse and kill him. Not long after, they encounter a German supply ship. Just as they resign themselves to being captured, an American ship arrives and sinks the German ship. While waiting for the Americans to arrive and rescue them, another German climbs aboard their lifeboat and pulls a gun on them. He's quickly disarmed. He asks if they're going to kill him. "What are you gonna do with people like that?" Stanley asks. No one has an answer for him.

The lack of answers is one of the reasons that Lifeboat is the least known of all of Hitchcock's films, and it's one of the things that - to me - make it one of his best. There are no real answers to questions about hatred, intolerance, thuggery, genocide and the rest of the host of problems that beset the modern world. What are you gonna do with people who kill indiscriminately and - seemingly - for the fun of it? What are you gonna do with people who would rather hate than love, would rather look for the negative than the positive? What are you gonna do with war criminals? Can they be rehabilitated? Or will they always carry their hatred with them? Hitchcock doesn't provide us with any answers to these questions. He just shoves seven people into a leaky boat lets them go at each other. And the forces of democracy don't make a very good showing for themselves. First, they're too busy fighting amongst themselves. Then they abdicate all authority to their enemy, because he's strong and willing to take charge. Finally, when the leader's mask slips off and they see him for who he really is, they turn on him and slaughter him with a vengeance. This is a fairly accurate analogy for America's involvement in World War II. You could also say that it's a pretty good analogy for every dictatorship that has ever existed, from Julius Caesar right on down to Muammar Gaddafi. Dictators take advantage of fractions and infighting to assume control. Everyone sees them as strong, take-charge leaders and cedes authority to the dictator. Eventually, the dictator's actions grow so audacious that those who allowed him into power turn on him and destroy him. So, in Lifeboat, Hitchcock gives us a primer - and a warning - about dictatorship. And he wraps the entire thing up in an extremely engrossing film that takes place entirely within the confines of a single lifeboat.

Lifeboat is rated G and is filmed in glorious black and white. Running time is 97 minutes.

The Trouble with Harry (1955)

The trouble with Harry Worp isn't so much that he's dead; it's that no one's quite sure how he died. Or who killed him. Captain Wiles (Edmund Gwenn) thinks he might have shot Harry. Jennifer Rogers (Shirley McClaine in her film debut) hit him over the head. So did Miss Gravely (Mildred Natwick). Sam Marlowe (John Forsythe), a local artist, stumbles upon the body, just as Captain Wiles is trying to drag him into the woods. Sam is sympathetic. He's even willing to help get rid of the corpus delicti. Shovels are procured. The digging begins. Soon Harry is safely tucked away underground. But not for long. When the good captain accounts for all of his bullets and realizes that he didn't shoot Harry, he insists they dig him back up. And so they do. Then Sam meets Jennifer, and it's love at first sight. Jennifer tells Sam that Harry was her husband. She's been trying to get away from him. He's been quite insistent that they stay together. While he was insisting his way into her house, she whacked him over the head, and he stumbled away. Jennifer thinks the hit on the head must have killed Harry. She thinks they should just put him back in the ground and forget about him. So Jennifer and Sam and Captain Wiles bury Harry again. Then Miss Gravely tells the captain that she thinks that she might have killed Harry. He stumbled toward her while she was hiking, grabbing at her, knocking her down. She pulled off her hiking boot and clubbed him over the head with it. She's worried that she killed Harry. She wants him dug back up so that she can go to the police. Sam decides that they need to find out exactly how Harry died first. So they dig him up, clean him up, and call the doctor. He'll tell them how Harry really died. I won't though.

The Trouble with Harry was one of director Alfred Hitchcock's favorite movies, and it's easy to see why. It's and absolutely delightful film; although, American audiences didn't feel that way in 1955. It received poor reviews here. Europe received it better. The film ran for a year in England and Italy, for a year and a half in France. This is not a fast-paced movie, filled with intrigue and chase scenes and shoot-outs and explosions. It's a deliberate film that takes its time unfolding its story. The Trouble with Harry is more about the characters than it is about the crime, and the characters are wonderful. Sam is a bohemian artist who doesn't give a fig for conventions. Captain Wiles talks of his life sailing the world when in fact he was merely a tug boat captain on the East River. Miss Gravely is a middle-aged spinster who proves that you're never too old to fall head-over-heels in love. And Jennifer is a quirky young mother who wants to live her life in her own way. All four of these are brought together over the corpse of Jennifer's husband. The Technicolor cinematography brings the beautiful New Hampshire countryside to life. Interestingly, after the long exterior shots were filmed, the weather turned bad, so the rest of the filming had to be done on a sound stage. The crew collected as many of the Autumn leaves as they could and shipped them back to Hollywood, where they were painstakingly glued onto artificial trees to capture the feel of a New Hampshire Autumn. If you're in the mood for a quirky, romantic murder mystery, this one should fill the bill. Call it a black comedy or a morbid romance. Either way, The Trouble with Harry is a great movie.

The Trouble with Harry is rated G. Running time is 99 minutes.

Rebecca (1940)

Imagine a movie in which the main character is never once named, in which the title character never once steps on screen, yet in which the title character's presence permeates every scene. That film is Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca. It's a ghost story, of sorts, but only because Rebecca is dead, and everyone else in the film is haunted by her memory. It's not a good memory. Not for most, anyway. Meet Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier). Wealthy, educated, cultured, from good old English stock. He's visiting the south of France, a lovely place. He's also about to kill himself. Kind of reminds one of "Richard Cory." Anyway, a young woman (Joan Fontaine) stops him from leaping from a cliff. He's rude to her. Later he apologizes. They spend time together. She starts to fall in love with him, even though she knows he's way above her social standing. He asks her to marry him in an off-handed way and she accepts. Don't you just love whirlwind romances. Everything is roses until Maxim takes his new bride back to his ancestral pile of bricks and mortar, Mandalay. It's a creepy, shadowy, Gothic travesty with vast rooms and soaring ceilings. It's haunted too. The maid, Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson), keeps the ghost of Rebecca alive. Rebecca's name is repeated over and over through the film, like a mantra. "Those belonged to Rebecca...Rebecca always wrote her letters in here...That's Rebecca's room...Tell me about Rebecca...." Often she's referred to as Mrs. de Winter, even though it's obvious that there's now a new Mrs. de Winter, and - Oh, look! - she's standing right here. The new Mrs. de Winter is overwhelmed by the house, by Mrs. Danvers, by Rebecca.

Mrs. de Winter wants to put on a ball at the house. Mrs. Danvers tricks her into wearing the same costume Rebecca wore at her last ball before she drowned in a boating accident. Maxim is furious when he sees her. She runs into Rebecca's room, which Mrs. Danvers has kept exactly the way it was before Rebecca's death. The room is a shrine. Mrs. Danvers tries to get Mrs. de Winter to take her own life. She almost does it too. But a flare fired out at sea breaks the spell. A ship has hit the rocks. All hands rush to the beach. Mrs. Danvers learns that divers, sent down to examine the hull of the stricken ship, have discovered Rebecca's sail boat. Rebecca's still in it. Maxim then tells his new wife the story of his previous wife, how she cuckolded him with just about everyone she could find. One night, in her private cottage, she told him she was pregnant and that the child wasn't his. She laughed at him. He struck her. She fell. She didn't get up. He put her body in the sail boat, went out to sea and scuttled it. Now there has to be an inquest, and all of it will come to light. Enter Jack Favell (George Sanders). He's Rebecca's favorite cousin. He's a car salesman who's getting tired of selling cars he can't afford to own. He'd like to move up in the world. From the things he says to the new Mrs. de Winter, you get the feeling that he and Rebecca were a little closer than cousins. More like kissing cousins. Favell makes threats. He has information about the accident. He'll tell, unless.... Well, you can guess.

Rebecca is a fascinating movie for many reasons. Adapted from the novel by Daphne de Maurier, the film explores female sexuality at a time before such things were discussed in polite society. Mrs. Danvers says, "Love was a game to [Rebecca]." Love, here, is a Hollywood euphemism for sex. It is hinted, though never stated, that Rebecca was having a lot of it with a lot of people, including Favell. Maybe even Mrs. Danvers. She's obsessed with the memory of Rebecca. She touches her belongings with gentle hands, like a lover's caress. Lesbianism - like homosexuality - was never shown back in the day. It was only inferred. Rebecca infers a lot. The movie was filmed in glorious black and white on the same stretch of California coastline where The Ghost and Mrs. Muir was filmed six years later. It's a gorgeously haunting area, perfectly suited to ghost stories. This is one of the best you'll ever see, although you won't ever see the ghost. And you won't ever learn Mrs. de Winter's real name. Cuz, in the end, the film keeps its secrets to itself.

Rebecca is rated G.