Rent Sabotage (1936)

Political Thriller. - Sabotage review by Steve

This has a darker mood than most Alfred Hitchcock films in his British period. It's a loose adaptation of Joseph Conrad's novel The Secret Agent, which is reconstructed into a series of suspenseful set pieces and opportunities for black comedy.

The content requires a skilled dramatic lead and the production is blessed by the brilliant, liquid eyed Hollywood star Sylvia Sidney. This is nearly as much her picture as a Hitchcock. How frustrating that Robert Donat was cast to co-star but backed out due to illness.

Saboteurs are active around London (their aims are vague) and plan to leave a time bomb at Piccadilly Station which is... entrusted to Sylvia's young brother. He dawdles across London unaware of what his package contains. But we know the time of detonation, and Hitch cuts ever more rapidly between clocks, the package and the fatal distractions of the big city.

The staging and editing of this episode are widely praised, though the Master often used the outcome as an example of bad film making.  It is a political thriller, and one of the director's best and most suspenseful thrillers with atmospheric location work and many memorable set pieces.

Bombs, Buses and Half-Baked Hitch - Sabotage review by griggs

For a film about ticking bombs, Sabotage is oddly relaxed about blowing your nerves to bits. London’s on edge, explosions are being plotted by men who look like they should be arguing over sprouts, and Hitchcock treats the city like his own panic playground.

The setup is killer: a cinema owner secretly in with saboteurs, his wife kept in the dark, and a Scotland Yard man posing as the chatty greengrocer next door. When Hitch sticks to markets, box offices and that infamous bus sequence, the tension turns properly queasy – the kind that makes you side-eye your fellow passengers.

The trouble is everything around those highlights. Most of the characters feel like sketches, and the lurches between cosy domestic drama, thriller and random comedy are… generous, let’s say. As a warm-up for later masterpieces it’s fascinating; taken on its own, it’s a brisk, scruffy little firecracker that fizzles as often as it pops.

London under the Lash - Sabotage review by CH

Some way after the Conrad novel which appeared three decades earlier, this take on the ever-present threat of terrorism is very much a series of set-pieces. Table to bus; crowded cinema to grand restaurant; a market stall to zoo... all this is, along the way, a thronging London panorama from which step forward actors able to make this wild tale convincing.