Shot entirely on a single location, Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat is his first film to employ the minimal settings environment which he used to greater effect in his later career & despite the many constraints of framing so many characters within such limited space, this master director triumphs in creating an effective thriller that even today remains one of his most underrated works.

With its entire plot unfolding on a lifeboat during World War II, Lifeboat concerns a group of survivors left stranded in the middle of the ocean after their ship & a German U-boat sunk each other in combat. Trouble starts brewing when they pull a man from the water who turns out to be from the U-boat. And so begins…

Decades Project: 2/4 of the 40's

"Dying together's even more personal than living together."

Lifeboat is Alfred Hitchcock's 12 Angry Men.

The premise is as simple as it gets: a ship is destroyed in the middle of the ocean, and six men and three women survive by climbing aboard a small lifeboat. The entire film takes place exclusively on the boat. This type of simple concept can be difficult to execute (no room for plot contrivances), but with good writing it can work wonders. If the characters are well defined then they can play off each other and the audience will feel the conflict brewing beneath the surface. And thanks to the talented writing, acting, and directing, that's exactly what…

The film at first seems like a technical experiment, how to make a compelling film set within the confines of a lifeboat, but as plays out we see that it’s more of a moral experiment. The boatfull of diverse passengers like the atomic particles of a volatile isotope, colliding and grouping and decaying.

This floating metaphor carries a Communist, an Ayn Rand industrialist, a pacifist, a Brit merchant marine, a racy Algonquin Round Table member wearing future Cartier fish bait, a gangrenous big galoot, the German kapitan, and Hitchcock in a newspaper ad for Reduco. It’s the Group-in-Jeopardy genre. Hitchcock called it “a microcosm of the war.”

The movie struggles to balance a theme of “judge not lest you be…

Drama | War

Connie Porter: What part of the ship are you from, darling?
John Kovac: Engine Room. I was off duty in the Wash Room, thanks, caught with my - I was washing my hands when the torpedo snagged us.

LIFEBOAT is one of those films that takes place only in one spot, and this is another Alfred Hitchcock film made during the war. Its unique setting, entirely aboard a lifeboat adrift at sea, very insteresting story. I think this film is definitely one of his best, with a wonderful visual, with fabulous lead performance and great character development.
• Story: 8/10
• Sound: 8/10
• Acting: 8/10
• Pacing: 8/10
• Editing: 8/10
• Visuals: 8/10
• Dialogue:…

Alfred Hitchcock's wartime thriller is thoroughly entertaining. The entire film takes place aboard one tiny lifeboat. We are first introduced to am array of survivors of a ship that was torpedoed - along with a survivor from the U-Boat that did it! The rest of the film focuses on these characters as they face a series of dilemmas relating to their situation and relationship with each other. The film is an allegory for the tensions between various nationalities and sections of society during World War 2. It is constantly fascinating and the film really doesn't pull it's punches either - certain elements are still shocking to this day! The cast, which is headed by Tallulah Bankhead, is absolutely great and…

Part of the Alfred Hitchcock Sound Era Films In Chronological Order project.

Tallulah, you WERE wonderful, darling!

Like when I reviewed Sunset Boulevard, and ended up spending most of that review talking about Gloria Swanson, it's going to be hard not to spend much of this review talking about the wonderful Tallulah Bankhead.

On the basis of this one magnificent performance, the only film of hers that I have seen to date, it has to be said that she can only be seen to have wasted most of her career. So entrancing, entertaining, charismatic, beautiful and brilliant is she here that on this one viewing alone it could be one of my film performances of its decade - or perhaps…

A Hitchcock classic where a handful of survivors of a torpedoed merchant ship during World War II find themselves in the same lifeboat with one of the crew members of the U-boat that sank their ship. A few injured, one woman with a dead baby, a reporter (Bankhead) wearing a fur coat, a nurse, a ship yard owner, and a couple of the boats crew fight over whether or not to trust the German. Eventually one of the survivors needs to have their leg amputated.
First off let’s not nickname the only black guy from the crew “charcoal”. The whole film is about the mistrust of an enemy on board, who should be leading the crew to better serve their…

Um Barco e Nove Destinos.

Um filme produzido durante a 2ª Guerra e que tentou capitalizar em cima desse tema, falhando miseravelmente...

É talvez o filme mais monótono da carreira do Hitchcock, que tentou dar uma inovada filmando em apenas um cenário, mas pra que isso funcionasse teria que ter um roteiro forte e interessante, e não chegou nem perto disso. É 1:30h de piadinhas sem graça, melodramas insossos e uns papinhos pseudo ideológicos constrangedores. E dentro disso, nada que despertasse algum momento genuíno de tensão ou suspense.

Hitchcock quis passar uma mensagem de que você não podia confiar no inimigo não importa o quão bom ele pareça ser. Usando assim o filme como uma peça de propaganda em favor…