Search - Lifeboat on DVD

MPAA Rating: NR Content Advisory: Mild Violence, Suitable for Children Movie Release: 1944 DVD Release: 10/18/2005 Format: DVD - Black and White - Closed Captioned Edition: Dual Layered Audio Tracks: English Subtitles: English, Spanish SwapaDVD Credits: 1 Number of Discs: 1 Run Time: 1 hrs 36 mins Studio: 20th Century Fox Members Wishing: 13 Genres: Drama, Adventure Drama, Sea Adventure, Ensemble Film

Seeking a creative challenge after several years' worth of fairly elaborate melodramas, director Alfred Hitchcock stages all of the action in Lifeboat in one tiny boat, adrift in the North Atlantic. The boat holds eight survivors of a Nazi torpedo attack: sophisticated magazine writer/photographer Constance Porter (Tallulah Bankhead), Communist seaman John Kovac (John Hodiak), nurse Alice MacKenzie (Mary Anderson), mild-mannered radio-operator Stan (Hume Cronyn), seriously wounded Brooklynese stoker Gus Smith (William Bendix), insufferable-capitalist Charles Rittenhouse (Henry Hull), black-steward George Spencer (Canada Lee) and half-mad passenger Mrs. Higgins (Heather Angel), who carries the body of her dead baby. This adroitly calculated cross-section of humanity is reduced by one when Mrs. Higgins kills herself. After a day or so of floating aimlessly about, the castaways pick up another passenger, Willy (Walter Slezak), who is a survivor from the German U-boat. At first everyone assumes that Willy cannot speak English, but when the necessity arises he reveals himself to be conversant in several languages and highly intelligent; in fact, he was the U-boat's captain. As the only one on board with any sense of seamanship, Willy steers a course to his mother ship, while the others resign themselves to being prisoners of war. After it becomes necessary to amputate Gus's leg, Willy decides that the burly stoker is excess weight; while the others sleep, he tosses Gus overboard, watching dispassionately as the poor man drowns. When the rest of the passengers discover what he's done, all of them (with one significant exception) violently gang up on Gus, and once more, the lifeboat drifts about sans navigation. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Tallulah Bankhead - Constance Porter
William Bendix - Gus Smith
Walter Slezak - Willy, the German submarine commander
John Hodiak - John Kovac
Hume Cronyn - Stanley Garett
Mary Anderson - Alice MacKenzie

Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat} (1944) has come to DVD is a special edition, with a pair of special features -- one is a commentary by Drew Casper, who holds a professorial chair named in honor of Hitchcock and his wife Alma; the other is a documentary on the making of the movie. Casper spends a great deal of time telling us what we're actually seeing, and calls attention to himself a great deal, with his mannerisms and commentary -- it's like a performance piece for him, rather than a real analysis of the movie itself, although he does let some important information get through to us. Strangely enough, Casper is a lot more effective in the featurette The Making of Lifeboat: The Theater of War, in which he shares screentime with others, including the director's daughter -- it's a matter of less being more, and in this case a lot less is a lot more; it gives us the hard background on the movie. There's also a still-frame gallery that makes a good supplement to the featurette, though the most interesting still are used in the latter.

The movie has been given a generous 20 chapters, and gets a razor-sharp full-screen (1.33-to-1) transfer. The sound is good and loud and detailed as well, and it is a pleasure to watch in this format, although it has always looked good on screen in this reviewer's memory. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide