Lifeboat

A passenger ship is sunk by a German submarine and the survivors end up in one lifeboat. The last person they pull aboard is a man from the submarine that sank them. Hitchcock keeps the entire film inside that boat, and the camera never sees shore. The constraint became a rehearsal for the enclosed films that followed, Rope and Rear Window among them. He solved his own cameo inventively. With no passersby available in a film set on open water, he posed for the before and after photographs in an advertisement for a fictional weight-loss drug called Reduco, printed in a newspaper in the boat. It was convincing enough that he received letters asking where to buy it. John Steinbeck wrote the story and disliked the result. He objected to what he read as slurs against organised labour and to the Black character being reduced to a stock comedy figure, saying his own version had a man of dignity, purpose and personality. He asked for his name to be removed and was refused. Some critics including Bosley Crowther found it dangerous in wartime that the German captain is the most competent person aboard. Tallulah Bankhead won Best Actress from the New York Film Critics Circle. Who it is for: viewers who like single-location tension and moral argument. Who it is not for: anyone who will find the racial portrayal indefensible. Steinbeck objected on the same grounds.