Lifeboat



Based on an unpublished novella by John Steinbeck (written on commission expressly to provide treatment material for Hitchcock's screen scenario), Lifeboat found the Master of Suspense navigating a course of maximal tension in the most minimal of settings with a consistently inventive, beautifully paced drama that would foreshadow the single-set experiments of Rope and Dial M for Murder.

After a Nazi torpedo reduces an ocean liner to wooden splinters and scorched personal effects, the survivors of the attack pull themselves aboard a drifting lifeboat in the hope of eventual rescue. But the motivations of the German submarine captain (played by Walter Slezak) on the eponymous craft might extend beyond mere survival...

With a cast including Shadow of a Doubt veteran Hume Cronyn and the extraordinary, irrepressible Tallulah Bankhead, this "picture of characters", as François Truffaut aptly termed the film, oscillates dazzlingly between comic repartée and white-knuckle suspense a perfect example of "the Hitchcock touch".

The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present the Oscar-nominated Lifeboat in a Dual Format (Blu-ray and DVD) standard edition & limited edition Dual Format steelbook, accompanied by Hitchcock's two French-language wartime shorts, Bon voyage and Aventure malgache.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

• New high-definition master, officially licensed from Twentieth Century Fox
• New high-definition transfers of Hitchcock's little-seen French-language 1944 wartime films, Bon voyage (26 minutes) and Aventure malgache (31 minutes) officially licensed from the British Film Institute
• Optional English subtitles on all three films
• 20-minute documentary on the making of Lifeboat
• 12-minute excerpt from the legendary 1962 audio interviews between Hitchcock and François Truffaut, discussing Lifeboat and the wartime shorts
• PLUS: A 36-page booklet featuring archival imagery alongside new writing by critics Bill Krohn, Arthur Mas, and Martial Pisani

Also available as a Limited Edition SteelBook edition:

So I guess this release loses the Drew Casper commentary and the 45 minute vintage Hitchcock interview for Canadian TV from the DVD version....

As usual, MoC's make all the right choices. Lifeboat is an extremely underrated work, and the two French Hitchcock* films are among the last three of his available films that I've yet to see. The director's description of the structure of Bon Voyage (in the Truffaut interviews) made me curious to see it long ago, but I never got hold of these two. Have they been restored since the early '90s BFI restoration?

*Or, taking a cue from MichaelB to describe these two: "Eetchcock films"

I was just saying to myself that these shorts would make a nice set of extras for this title. Glad to see that MOC agree. They're very enjoyable, especially Aventure malgache , and in a certain sense unusual as propaganda. I'll gladly double dip.

Nice to see this on Blu, and the inclusion of a French films is a smart move on MoC's part - thematically relevant and catnip for completists who already have the main feature.

In the case of Aventure Malgache, I'd replace 'unusual' with 'useless'. It's a fascinating film for lots of reasons, but it lamentably fails to fulfil its original brief.

Which is doubtless why it was shelved.

I didn't know it was shelved, but that makes a perfect sort of sense considering how interested it is with really specific politics. Though I'd have thought the SNAFU-esque Bon Voyage would have been the one to get locked up.

We all agree, — both films have long been favorites. I just would say something tangential/related, very briefly, about Hitchcock and these 'subterranean' films of his (so to speak), as it's very important, at least for me — and the good thing is that we can all access the films mentioned in the following:

Alfred Hitchcock directed nearly twenty (figure might be a bit off) films from the mid-late-'50s into the '60s for ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS, all of which run between around 25 and 28 minutes. These "episodes" are medium-length films ('moyen-métrage', to keep with the French wartime argot), by Hitchcock. They are exemplary. The difference between these episodes and the others in the series is mostly (but not exclusively) the difference between night and day. He made these films like it was "simple as breathing," between such feature-shoots as THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY, THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH, THE WRONG MAN, VERTIGO, NORTH BY NORTHWEST, PSYCHO, etc....

It's unfortunate that because these episodes (in fact, short/medium-length Hitchcock films) were released within the context of the TV series that they don't register within the filmography as 'the essential works', the Hitchcock corpus, canonical Hitch... But it's a mistake — and not one made out of ignorance or rancorous philistinism or anything of the sort, but mostly due only to the matter of context.

The Hitchcock AHP films are abundant enough and truly extraordinary-enough to constitute the "Hitchcock shadow oeuvre". Imagine one of the greatest of all directors made twenty films or so that had only now been discovered, and you can watch them all: this is what the Hitchcock AHP films represent: from THE CASE OF MR. PELHAM, to MR. BLANCHARD'S SECRET, DIP IN THE BOOL, BANQUO'S CHAIR, etc.... These are all among the most important films of the 1950s.

One of my goals over the next few years is simply to spread awareness about these incredible, incredible films, which should be mentioned in the same breath as the features (and maybe someday will be).

Would it be plausible for MoC to release these films? It would be spectacular.

I was never 100% certain about this, but I think the two-week run of Aventure Malgache that I oversaw in the early 1990s was the film's public premiere.


No, that does the propaganda job perfectly - it's essentially a half-hour version of the famous "careless talk costs lives" poster. As it happens, though, I don't think that was widely shown either.

As for Craig's post, I completely agree - I've been similarly championing Ken Russell's extensive body of TV work, which is in no way inferior to his features and quite a bit of it is markedly superior.

Besides the half-hour Alfred Hitchcock Presents shows mentioned, don't forget the three longer ones he directed, two of them for other series. Four O'Clock (made for the Suspicion series) is a stunning exercise in existential suspense that climaxes with such mind-blowing intensity I wonder if it isn't the greatest thing he ever made. I have a French Universal DVD set including all twenty Hitch-directed TV episodes.

Oh yes, hence SNAFU comparison, but it gets there in such a roundabout way and with Hitchcock's under appreciated humanism that I don't think it works in the usual manner. He can't help but make everyone human which always damages propaganda.

BDDefinition review

4 and a half out of 5 overall score.

As great as the extras are, it's a shame they couldn't get the Drew Casper commentary (yes, I can stand him, and even with the dead air in the last 1/3 of the film) and the 1-hour Canadian TV interview with Hitchcock from the DVD set.

I'm afraid we didn't want the Drew Casper commentary:

What about elbows? A major consideration in a crowded lifeboat, I'd have thought.

I'm going to watch the US Fox DVD some time this week (I've had it for years and just never taken a bite), and Nick just sold me on not listening to the commentary.

LOL

I just scanned the list of episodes directed by Hitch, and you couldn't be more correct. I have only seen the 1st and 2nd season episodes (the only two seasons I have bought and watched), and his episodes (about seven in total from the first two seasons) clearly still stay in my mind years later despite not knowing before today he had directed those specific episodes. What a wonderful period of creativity.

Thanks for your post.

[earnest whisper]"It would not be until 1955 and The Trouble with Harry that Hitchcock would explore the structural implications of knees and whoops-a-daisy." [/earnest whisper]

I watched Lifeboat last night and thought it looked fantastic, and a great film too!

Looking forward to watching Bon Voyage and Adventure Malgache this weekend, neither of which I've seen before...