Saboteur - Saturday Classics

Conceived as an American variation on The 39 Steps, Saboteur's double chase plotgave Hitchcock license to exploit the monumental scale of his adopted homeland. Robert Cummings stars as a factory worker ensnared in a wartime espionage plot that carries him from the California desert to the Statue of Liberty. That the worst of the saboteurs shield themselves behind a veneer of wealth and respectability surely owes something to radical novelist Dorothy Parker's acerbic screenwriting, though Hitchcock himself showed a subversive streak in wanting to cast cowboy star Harry Carey as the villainous rancher eventually played by Otto Kruger. Art director Robert Boyle helped Hitchcock achieve the mélange of larger than life set pieces, setting the stage for their subsequent collaborations on North by Northwest, The Birds, and Marnie. Produced at a vulnerable moment in the director's American career, Saboteur was the box office success the director needed to secure that rarest Hollywood commodity: creative control. --Harvard Film Archive https://youtu.be/EMmBpc1hSgo