Without a Paddle: Alfred Hitchcock’s Lifeboat

by Rob DiCristino

“Dying together’s even more personal than living together.”

Human beings are tribal animals: We love to put ourselves in boxes with labels and other identifiers that distinguish Us from Them. Groups provide comfort. Mobs provide anonymity. There’s pride in association, a kind of spiritual connection we feel with those who share our politics or genealogy. But while we may choose (or be forced) to identify with one particular group, the real test is the degree to which we’re willing to coexist with others. We might find it convenient to associate in peace, or we might find it necessary to obliterate our enemies with extreme prejudice. Alfred Hitchcock, ever the critic of social mores and institutional ambitions, brings these questions to light in his underrated wartime film, Lifeboat. Shot almost entirely on one set and featuring a limited cast of characters, it examines the reasons we associate and the divisions that those associations create between us. By forcing a diverse group to fight for a common interest, Hitchcock asks us an important question: is it better to survive together or to die alone?

Near the end of World War II, a German U-boat sinks an American cruiser in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The ship’s survivors — posh fashion reporter Connie (Tallulah Bankhead), millionaire businessman Rittenhouse (Henry Hull), Army nurse Alice (Mary Anderson), brave steward Joe (Canada Lee), young mother Higley (Heather Angel), and crewmen Kovac, Stanley, and Gus (John Hodiak, Hume Cronym, and William Bendix) — find themselves adrift with limited supplies and no plan for rescue. Being lost at sea is trouble enough, but their mix of ambitions, backgrounds, and destinations makes cooperation a sizable task. Matters are made even worse when they recover German sailor Willi (Walter Slezak), who claims to know the way to safety. Do they listen to this man? Can he be trusted? In fact, can the steward? Can the reporter? Why does she speak German, anyhow? What’s she hiding? Mass paranoia begins to set in, and the survivors realize that there’s a lot more dividing them than their German prisoner.

Like Hitchcock’s best work, Lifeboat’s major strengths are its complex characters and morally-ambiguous tone. It’s a world not unlike our own: a melting pot of cultures, classes, and genders all floating together along the same current. Predictably, racism and class warfare take center stage: the proletariat bruiser Kovac belittles Connie for her jewelry and clothing, while Rittenhouse offends him with his immense wealth and capitalist ideals. Kovac is the first to suggest quarantining the German sailor and the first to stir up xenophobia amongst the rest of the boat. His shipmate Gus is more genial, a lovable dope. His only concern is meeting his Rosie back on the dance floor. But even the delightful Gus sneers at the thought of Al Magaroulian, the flat-footed Armenian who has eyes for Rosie. His quiet sadness develops into an existential crisis and proves that, as in life, we often turn the pain and insecurity inside ourselves into hate and distrust for others.

Tallulah Bankhead plays Connie Porter as feisty and self-possessed, which caused Hitchcock some headaches with the executives at Fox. During this time of international strife, they felt, the female lead should exemplify wholesome American values. But Connie’s inclusivity and cosmopolitain outlook become powerful tools for connectivity as the plot develops: she speaks German, allowing her to mediate between the crew and their prisoner. She’s sympathetic to “that kind of girl,” giving sad and naive nurse Alice a shoulder to cry on when she laments her affair with a married doctor. She’s kind and respectful of Charcoal Joe, the film’s only character of color. In a powerful contrast with the film’s other female characters (the nurse is overwhelmed by the shame of her sins, and Mrs. Higley commits suicide shortly after the death of her baby), Connie cuts through much of the posturing that pushes so many young women into subservient roles. Love until you don’t, she’d say. Try until you can’t. Nothing is forever.

Hitchcock also received pushback for humanizing the Nazi sailor, Willi. He’s the subject of frequent discussions and tribunals aboard the ship: should they treat him with the dignity and respect commonly afforded prisoners of war, or, given their limited supplies and living space, toss him overboard? The ethical questions become even more complex as Willi reveals himself to be much more capable than originally thought: he’s actually a U-boat captain who speaks perfect English. How can they trust him? How can he trust them? It’s here that Lifeboat asks just how important our pride and prejudice become in survival situations. How long can we maintain decorum before we lose control? Willi is often the smart one: he privately rations food and water, keeps his abilities and knowledge as vague as possible, and manipulates the reckless disorder of the ship to his advantage. But does that make him evil? He certainly isn’t above petty revenge: his heartbreaking final scene with Gus proves that he’s still a man of his people. Would we have done any different?

At its heart, Lifeboat argues that we find our personal truths when we shed our labels. Under the hot mid-Atlantic sun, the millionaire happily gambles his fortune with the working stiff. The Yank, the Limey, and the Jerry all brag about the menus of their favorite hometown cafes. But again, dropping their masks goes both ways: they also brutally murder Willi when his treachery becomes apparent (“My only regret is, that in the end, I joined a mob,” says Rittenhouse). Hitchcock then bookends with the film’s opening to build his human beings back into the class-conscious archetypes they used to be: after spotting an Allied ship on the horizon, Rittenhouse climbs into his double-breasted suit. Connie panics about her makeup. Alice asks for Stanley’s surname (they are to be married). Most ironically, they react with disgust when a new German prisoner asks if they’re going to kill him. With their rescue in sight and their divisions reaffirmed, they pretend to be horrified. What are they, savages?

Cinema Bestius: Apocalypse Now

Saigon… Shit.

#20 – Apocalypse Now

Apostle Patrick Bromley has mentioned that every time he sits down to screen Apocalypse Now, the first ten minutes convince him that it is the single greatest film ever made. Then, the next two hours and 13 minutes try to talk him out of that opinion. Well, the Pope recently showed the first ten minutes to a senior-level high school composition class. It wowed them. It made the Pope remember that lots of movies used to be like this, full of ideas and ambition and style and substance.

The Plot in Brief: Lt. Willard (Martin Sheen) is given a mission by Army Special Ops in Saigon. He is to go up river and find rogue Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brandon). Kurtz’s methods have become unsound, and Willard is given the job of terminating him “with extreme prejudice.” On his way up river, Willard will take several side trips and have many adventures involving the madness of war.

Director Francis Ford Coppola famously said, “My movie is not about Vietnam, my movie IS Vietnam.” During production Coppola met with more than his share of troubles: he fired the original leading man, Harvey Keitel; Martin Sheen, the replacement lead, had a nervous breakdown and a heart attack on set and had to be sent back to the United States for a few weeks; a typhoon destroyed a million-dollar set; and, most famously, the helicopters rented from the Philippine government often flew away with no warning to go fight in a real war.

Oh, and Marlon Brando showed up overweight and not knowing his lines.

Any director could have faced these problems; only Coppola could have emerged with the film that he did. Apocalypse Now is a legitimate American masterpiece. The ambition and imagination of this film cannot be easily summarized in a few sentences. We see the canvas on which Coppola is painting, we sense the ideas in his head, we are exposed to the sheer ambition of his method and it makes all modern movies look like television commercials for whoopee cushions.

The film has an interesting backstory. It was the brainchild of screenwriter John Milius, who thought it would be interesting to update Joseph Conrad’s famous novella Heart of Darkness, moving the locale from the Congo to Vietnam. The project went through several iterations and script drafts and at one point it looked as though Coppola protégé George Lucas would direct it, but then Lucas got the green light on a little film of his called American Graffiti. After the commercial success of both Godfather films and the critical success of The Conversation, Coppola decided to make the script, now titled Apocalypse Now, his next film.

French filmmaker Francois Truffaut once famously said, ”it is impossible to make an anti-war film.” That is, that the minute the filmmaker puts war on the big screen, the violence and bloodshed will be very exciting to certain viewers, acting as more of an attractant than deterrent. Coppola here has done the seemingly impossible: he has made a film that will cause not one human to say, “I wanna go there, send me to Vietnam.” Coppola makes war seem so blood-soaked and senseless, so sudden and surreal—and I sense that this gets closer to the truth of the matter than any jingoistic wartime propaganda Hollywood had produced before.

Laurence Fishburne (Morpheus in the Matrix movies) started his acting career in Apocalypse Now. Although this may have been illegal at the time, Fishburne was 16 when filming began. Coppola took him to the Philippines, put him on a boat, and then set off explosives. This isn’t film making, this is kidnapping. Fishburne looks properly baby-faced in the film—my God, it looks like he’s twelve. Though he was only 14 when production began (He lied about his age.) he was 17 when the film premiered. Fishburne’s presence reminds us that wars are always fought by children. We send children off to fight our wars.

The Robert Duvall/Colonel Kilgore sequence is justifiably famous and almost comprises a short film unto itself. Willard comments that the Duvall character would exit the war without a scratch, and the audience gleefully witnesses him ignoring artillery bursts and the other dangers so that his men can surf. The Duvall character likes to play Wagner through enormous speakers whenever he is storming a beach because he says the music “… scares the hell out of them.” It’s surreal and hilarious and nauseating, just like war. This sequence is also notable because it inspired the terrific Clash song “Charlie Don’t Surf.”

Apocalypse Now’s Three Miracles: Walter Murch’s sound editing turns this film into an aural landscape the likes of which had never been heard before. This was one of the first films to use Dolby Stereo sound. The Pope can still remember seeing this film in its original release and being floored when he heard the helicopters behind him, heard them fly over his head, and then saw them appear on the screen. Yowsa! Director Coppola has an uncanny ability to make each sequence in the film different and still have the film add up to more than just the sum of its parts. Martin Sheen gives a harrowing, career-best performance and is the glue that holds the whole enterprise together.

“In nomine Coppola, et Brando, y spiritu McNamara… Amen”

I would like to thank my first period College Composition class for their assistance in writing this column: Katherine Benjamin, Kelly Blend, Austin Brown, Ryan Casey, Mary Cronin, Louis DiPietro, Kiara Esparza, Dino Frentzas, Cecilia Garduno-Espinoza, Ryan Hedman, Susana Hernandez, Julianna Lappano, Joe Leone, Dan Mejia, Sabra Morton, Amy Pietruszynski, Dan “Pow!” Powell, Tasia Schmidt, Kiera Shorey, Ivan Smilkov, Victor Soberanis, Rich Sprecher, Pete Tsiampis, Juliana Vercillo, and Tiffany Waldrom. You guys are the bestius.