Hitchcock's answer to the perpetual film school dilemma of making a movie on a boat as one of a filmmaker's biggest challenges, is a textbook example of how it's done right.
Lifeboat (1944)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted: 21
Fresh: 20
Rotten:1
Average Rating: 7.9/10
Runtime: 1 hr 36 mins
Genre: Action/Adventure
Synopsis: LIFEBOAT is an intense thriller crafted around the psychological drama produced when eight unlikely companions are thrown together by drastic circumstance. The exceptional performances of its... LIFEBOAT is an intense thriller crafted around the psychological drama produced when eight unlikely companions are thrown together by drastic circumstance. The exceptional performances of its ensemble cast make it a classic, one credited with reviving Tallulah Bankhead's career. After a German U-boat torpedoes their ship, several survivors find themselves together in a lifeboat. Each is of a distinctly different background: Tallulah Bankhead's character, the radiant Constance Porter, is a famed fashion writer; others include tycoon Charles Rittenhouse (Henry Hull), marxist seaman John Kovac (John Hodiak), Stanley Garret (Hume Cronyn), a radio operator, a wounded furnace stoker, a nurse, a grieving mother, and a porter. The group is joined by the commander of the German U-boat (Walter Slezak), which was itself sunk in the exchange. Choosing to take him aboard as a gesture of humanity, and for the sake of his seafaring skills, proves to be a fateful decision. Production was done almost entirely in studio, using a range of specialized water sets and props to allow Hitchcock to achieve the camera angles he wanted while employing rear-projected seascapes shot off the coast of Florida. [More]
Starring: Tallulah Bankhead, William Bendix, Walter Slezak, John Hodiak
Starring: Tallulah Bankhead, William Bendix, Walter Slezak, John Hodiak, Hume Cronyn, Canada Lee, Mary Anderson, Henry Hill, Heather Angel
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Screenwriter: Jo Swerling
Story: John Steinbeck
Producer: Kenneth MacGowan
Composer: Hugo Friedhofer
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Reviews for Lifeboat
"It's based on the story by John Steinbeck, who wanted to show the Nazis as single-minded brutes with no redeeming human qualities.
That old master of screen melodrama, Alfred Hitchcock, and Writer John Steinbeck have combined their distinctive talents in a tremendously provocative film.
The characters are reasonably free of cliched personalities, so what happens between them is rarely predictable, and there are enough crises and tensions within the 96-minute running time to hold a viewer fully attentive.
Hitchcock's shifting sympathies guarantee our guilty involvement with the characters until he builds to a climax of intellectual and spiritual excitation.
boasts the filmmaker's trademark technical polish: His command over editing, framing, and optical effects deftly masters the challenges of a water-borne production
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