Saboteur (1942)

Hitchcock’s utterly brilliant black and white neo-noir thriller isn’t held up to the same heights as Vertigo (1958) or North By Northwest (1959) for example, but it’s clear from the outset how influential Saboteur was on those two thrillers, to name just two. Barry Kane (a terrifically convincing Robert Cummings) survives a fire at the aircraft factory where he works in Los Angeles; a fire that his friend fails to escape from. Barry is then forced to flee from the law after he is accused of sabotage, starting the fire that his friend perished in. Knowing that he spoke to the real perpetrator just minutes before the blaze, the rest of the film follows Barry from Los Angeles all the way to a finale at the statue of liberty in a bid to prove his innocence. It’s Hitchcock at his finest, and if the swiftness of Barry’s romance with Patricia is bordering on unbelievable, it’s quickly forgotten amongst the rampant pace of the chase. Saboteur captures the fear of the early forties, there was a world war dominating the world stage, and Hitchcock manages to almost preempt the feel of a cold war thriller to some extent. It’s terrific. 8.1/10