Even the Hitch-heads out there are likely to have missed 1944’s Lifeboat. The famed director’s most overlooked and least understood film begins with the sinking of a merchant marine vessel somewhere North of Bermuda. A ragtag band of survivors clings to life on a small lifeboat, adrift without a compass. They discover a German floating among the oil-soaked wreckage, and despite being enemies, the survivors bring him aboard and share their meager rations with him.
Little do they know the German is not what he seems: Willie is no simple engineer, but a cunning U-boat captain using the survivors in a bid to increase his own chances of survival. This portrayal of a Nazi shocked audiences and many critics of the time, and even led some notables such as John Steinbeck to call Hitchcock a Nazi sympathizer. Is there any truth to these accusations, or is this all just one big misunderstanding?
As a Hitchcock expert (I’ve been writing master’s-level film course materials on Hitchcock’s films for the past year and a half now) I was very excited to see this film come across my dashboard. Sadly, this pop-doc’s sensationalist bent was a bad experience for me: The Making A Murderer-type approach to film criticism and historical analysis really got my goat. We have to sit through almost an hour of history review and opinions from third parties before we actually get to the meat of Hitchcock’s vision, and even then we get a surface-level overview of what the director and the cast thought about the film. While there is some great examination of the inspiration behind a couple of characters and societal racism as portrayed in cinema at the time, these are all bullet points compared to what is presented throughout the bulk of the film.
Perhaps for those who watch documentaries solely for entertainment, Hitchcock’s Pro-Nazi Film? would be a good choice, but for those interested in film history or film analysis, it will be disappointing. I could not recommend this documentary for classroom use specifically because of its sensationalist narrative: The fact that the film’s Nazi wasn’t a mustache-twirling caricature and was subtle, thoughtful, and manipulative makes him all the more frightening.
That John Steinbeck was upset Hitchcock did what he always did and adapted a script does not prove that Hitchcock had any Nazi sympathies. This is especially in light of his previous films, Sabotage and Foreign Correspondent. Public librarians with a well-used pop-documentary section may want to consider Hitchcock’s Pro-Nazi Film? more highly, but I cannot see this documentary being used heavily in any college collection. Moderately recommended.
Where does this title belong on public library shelves?
Hitchcock’s Pro-Nazi Film? will do best among pop-documentary titles and may do well in film documentary collections.
What kind of film series could use this title?
You may want to consider using Hitchcock’s Pro-Nazi Film? in a film series about Hitchcock’s films.