Dying together is even more personal than living together
Alfred Hitchcock is a very important figure in cinematic history. He was The Master, a person whose films were so rigorously constructed that he grew bored of making them, that he felt the need to complicate his films to challenge himself. This led to the shrinking space of Lifeboat (and later to the apparent single-shot construction of Rope) – Hitch wanted to challenge himself with a film that was set in a very small space to see if he could make it work. This is also one of a handful of quasi-propaganda films that Hitch made during World War II, and this one by far the most obviously propagandistic, although how much of that comes from author John Steinbeck is hard to say – certainly the central, quasi-socialist main character of Kovac is a very recognizably Steinbeck-created leading man. However, Steinbeck was publicly dismissive of the film upon its release and its treatment of his material, so it is difficult to say whose tone dominates the film.
The film opens with the sinking smokestack of a ship and the wreckage and debris and chaos of its aftermath. The first body we see is a German u-boat crewman, before the camera reaches the lifeboat which houses only Tallulah Bankhead as reporter Constance Porter, well-dressed with lots of luggage. When she spots a sailor swimming toward the boat, instead of helping she films his approach to the boat, and the audience view is through her camera, perhaps suggesting some complicity and voyeurism in war films and newsreel footage and further shrinking the perspective. The surviving sailor is Kovac, an engine room worker who was in the bathroom when the torpedo hit. He is immediately offended by everything Porter the reporter stands for, particularly that she caught the entirety of the attack and sinking on her camera, and when he hears a call for help he takes the opportunity to ‘accidentally’ knock her camera overboard. This is something of a theme, with throwing all of Porter’s things into the ocean, as he breaks down her defenses and removes her upper-class notions to make her more sympathetic to the working classes and suffering of the downtrodden, but in the course of things it really just comes off obnoxious and self-serving as they develop a highly contrived romance.
In short order, they pick up a handful of more survivors, including a wounded Jewish-American, a woman with a dead baby, the black steward, a nurse, and a British soldier, which for the most part conveniently gives a stereotypical cross-section of the armed forces, into which then climbs a burly German soldier. They decide to vote democratically whether he should stay, because he is a POW and was ‘just following orders’ which has a certain ugly resonance in light of the Nuremberg Trials. On the side of throwing the German out are Kovac, the wounded man, but the discussion ends when the mother goes into hysterics upon the realization that her baby is dead. They bury the baby at sea with Joe (the black steward) saying a prayer, and they tie the mother down to keep her from jumping overboard. When they awake the next morning, she has disappeared, her ropes untied.
One of the central problems with the film is that all of the characters are clearly meant to stand in for the whole of their kind, but the script cannot seem to decide whether it wants to be on anyone’s side or not. When Kovac criticizes Porter as writing only about herself and not the soldiers she is supposedly writing about then knocks her typewriter into the ocean, we are supposed to be on Kovac’s side for his righteous indignation but Kovac is in practically every scene played as a self-righteous Communist-agitating prig. The nurse and British soldier who have a minor romance of their own are fairly likable, if both fairly disconnected from the war and their predicament. Our angry wounded Jewish serviceman is a tragic figure who very quickly goes crazy, and Canada Lee is given very little to work with to make Joe anything other than a series of black stereotypes (although to his credit he succeeds more than anyone else at being sympathetic). Finally, Willi, the German u-boat captain is just an evil bastard, through and through, but he is also tougher, smarter, and far more capable than anyone else on the boat and he takes command for pretty much the whole film which sends an altogether odd message, except in its suggestion that it is only when they all band together under the common cause that they can overthrow him.
When a storm kicks up, Willi reveals that he knows English and takes control of the ship and starts taking them toward a German supply ship after they have been blown far off course, because they have no chance to get anywhere else with their supplies washed away and the wounded man delirious. When one night they catch Willi after he pushes someone overboard, they finally rebel against him and get rid of him, then have a philosophical discussion of the basic evilness of the German people. While they continue to head for the German supply ship, it is sunk just as it comes into view and another German washes up into their lifeboat, who immediately pulls a gun, confirming the evil of all Germans.
The movie on the whole is a weirdly undecided propaganda piece where everyone, friend or enemy, is hard to like or appreciate, which perhaps generates from Hitch focusing more on the technical limiting of space rather than the actuality of the characters and themes. Everything is thus left a little muddled beyond the more general sense that all Germans are evil by nature, although it is also to be gleaned from the film that they are otherwise superior in every way. It remains highly entertaining and watchable, but it falls apart a bit upon close viewing and is pretty troubled in its message.
Favourite Character: Joe, because unlike the others he is at the very least a likable individual, if still not rising much above stereotype.
Favourite Moment/Scene: The opening sequence is pretty masterfully done, with the sinking smokestack and the wreckage. Also of note is Hitch’s clever cameo as the ‘before’ picture in a weight-loss ad in the newspaper they have on the lifeboat
Favourite Line: Most of the dialogue is a bit nondescript, but there’s an exchange between Kovac and Porter when he gets in the lifeboat at the start that’s pretty good.
Kovac: Lady, you certainly don’t look like somebody that’s just been shipwrecked.
Porter: Man, I certainly feel like it.
