Rent Sabotage (1936)
- General info
- Available formats
- Synopsis:
- Karl Verloc (Oskar Homolka), manager of a London cinema, is secretly involved with a gang of European saboteurs who are plotting a massive bomb attack in Piccadilly Circus. With the police already suspicious of Verloc, they place an undercover detective on his trail - can he bring the saboteurs to justice before they perpetrate their outrage on London?
- Actors:
- Sylvia Sidney, Oskar Homolka, Desmond Tester, John Loder, Joyce Barbour, Matthew Boulton, S.J. Warmington, William Dewhurst, Pamela Bevan, Peter Bull, Albert Chevalier, Clare Greet, Charles Hawtrey, Alfred Hitchcock, Martita Hunt, Mike Johnson, Hubert Leslie, Aubrey Mather, Frederick Piper, Fred Schwartz
- Directors:
- Alfred Hitchcock
- Producers:
- Michael Balcon
- Writers:
- Joseph Conrad, Charles Bennett, Ian Hay, Helen Simpson, Alma Reville, E.V.H. Emmett
- Studio:
- Network
- Genres:
- Action & Adventure, Classics, Thrillers
- Collections:
- 10 Films to Watch if You Like: Operation Mincemeat, A History of Cinemas in Films, Award Winners, Cinema Paradiso's 2023 Centenary Club: Part 1, Films to Watch If You Like..., Hitchcock in the 1940s, Ireland At the Oscars, A Brief History of Film...
- BBFC:
- Release Date:
- 01/06/2015
- Run Time:
- 76 minutes
- Languages:
- English Dolby Digital 1.0
- Subtitles:
- English
- Formats:
- Pal
- Aspect Ratio:
- Full Screen 1.37:1
- Colour:
- B & W
- BLU-RAY Regions:
- B
- Bonus:
- Introduction by Charles Barr
- On Location featurette, introduced by Robert Powell
- Image gallery
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Reviews (1) of Sabotage
Political Thriller. - Sabotage review by Steve
Hitchcock darkened the mood for Sabotage compared to his other British films, in this loose adaptation of Joseph Conrad's classic, The Secret Agent.
The film needed a skilled dramatic lead and the production was blessed by the brilliant, liquid eyed Sylvia Sidney. This is nearly as much a Sylvia Sidney picture as a Hitchcock. How frustrating that Robert Donat was cast to co-star but was unable to appear due to illness.
A gang of saboteurs is active around London (their aims are vague) and plan to leave a bomb at Piccadilly Station which is entrusted to Sidney's young brother and timed to detonate. While he dawdles across London, he is unaware of what his package contains. The staging and editing of this episode was widely praised. We are aware of the time of detonation, and Hitch cuts ever more rapidly between clocks, the package and the fatal distractions of the big city.
It is a political thriller, and one of the master's best and most suspenseful films with many memorable set pieces and some atmospheric location work.