Review of Sabotage

This film makes use of clever reference to locations, often at their darkest and most shadowy - Mr Verloc sabotages Battersea Power Station and brings darkness but his wife Winnie, (Sylvia Sydney) is always radiantly lit. In fact, Hitchcock the illusionist, created the 'locations' with giant photographs (stills exist of the shooting). His classic 'business' is perfectly in place - the contrast between the growing menace of Verloc and the 'English' humour is a characteristic which he refined here. An early cameo of Charles Hawtrey explaining the lives of fish at the aquarium while Verloc plots a bombing, the old lady arguing about a canary with the pet-shop owner who is also a homicidal bomber who keep ingredients in the larder! The latter is also henpecked by his gawky daughter (played by an unrecognisable Martita Hunt, not in Ms Havisham mode).Stevie, the heartbreakingly delightful brother is carrying the bomb to the Lord Mayor's show, while every device a crowd offers holds him up and builds the tension.

The scene where Winnie stabs Verloc (Oscar Homolka) is a triumph of understatement - it is banal evil: a struggle over the dinner table - Winnie stabs Verloc almost in one motion without effort, and without a clear purpose. Typically, having disposed of the villain, a trick leaves her free- the bomber strikes before the police can find Verloc's body. Hitchcock shies away from Conrad's bleak ending where Winnie is tricked out of the money and throws herself off a channel ferry. That would not be Hitch's style and this film is very much about style.