Sabotage (1936)

Film: Sabotage (1936)

Stars: Sylvia Sidney, Oscar Homolka, Desmond Tester, John Loder

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Sylvia Sidney-click here to learn more about Ms. Sidney (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles. 

We will be doing a weekend of Hitchcock starting today with another edition of "Sunday Leftovers" tomorrow which happens to coincide with the weekend we look at Sylvia Sidney, our Star of the Month's, connection to the Master of Suspense.  Sidney in 1936 was a very big deal, in fact according to some reports she was the highest-paid actress in Hollywood, commanding some $80,000 for her 8-week production of this movie (about $1.5 million today, not bad for two months on the job).  The actress has stated in interviews that she adored working with Hitchcock, though he treated her "like an idiot," so another case where he wasn't exactly respecting his leading woman.  Still, Sabotage is hard to argue with when it comes to the finished product-as someone who wasn't really feeling Sidney's demeanor last week with Fury, I was totally captivated with what she did with Hitchcock in this taut thriller.

(Spoilers Ahead) Sabotage (not to be confused with Hitchcock's Saboteur) is based on the novel The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad (another confusing angle-Hitch also made a movie called Secret Agent which we reviewed last month).  Sidney plays Mrs. Verloc (I don't think they ever actually say her first name), a woman in a tough marriage to Karl (Homolka) that she puts up with because it provides some financial help for her kid brother Stevie (Tester).  Karl is up to no good, as he is helping a terrorist group execute attacks all across London, though his commitment to these criminals is rocky.  Initially we think Mrs. Verloc's friend Ted (Loder) is just trying to flirt with a married woman, but we soon realize that he's a member of Scotland Yard, and in fact is tailing Karl, assuming (correctly) that he has something to do with the power grid attack at the beginning of the film.  The movie hits a climactic point when Karl, caught in a trap (Ted is about to realize that Karl has a bomb) sends Stevie to deliver the bomb on a bus, but Stevie, a young man, gets distracted & dies in the explosion.  This causes Mrs. Verloc to see Karl for who he really is, and in a fight she stabs him with a steak knife.  The ending is bittersweet, as Mrs. Verloc gets away with the death (it was in self-defense...for the most part), but she loses her kid brother, and she & Ted head off to a melancholy romance.

The movie is atypical for Hitchcock, who while he frequently would kill off adults in his films, sometimes giving us truly rough endings, it's rare that children appear in his films & end up dead.  Hitchcock himself would later say on The Dick Cavett Show that this was a huge error (even if it was true to the source), and wished that he had let the Stevie character somehow survive the crash.  It does, however, make for terrific drama.  I was certain that Stevie would run off of the bus, escaping death, and when he doesn't, it's a shock that elevates the remainder of the film.  As a result, this is a surprise success for me, and one of the better Hitchcock films of the 1930's.

As for Sidney, after a boring start (this is not the kind of Hitchcock film that puts the woman in the center), she nails the back half of the movie.  She uses her gigantic saucer eyes to totally capture the mood of the film, acting with her face as she begins to understand the true motives of both Karl & Ted. Karl's death scene is the true virtuoso.  While it's meant for us as the audience to take away that Mrs. Verloc committed the murder in self-defense, there's just enough doubt in Sidney's expression to make a modern audience question this...wondering if this was an expression of her grief over losing her brother rather than just a "they both reached for the knife" situation.  Either way, Sidney plays to her strengths here & gives me hope we'll have some better roles for her as we move away from Hitchcock into some of her other high-profile films.