Review of Lifeboat (1944) by Jonathan G — 15 Aug 2008

Merely sound, useful datums, a fascinating wasted experiment. I winked at some of the implied racism in this (Canada Lee's character is called "Charcoal" at one point) film because there are some interesting ideas here, but as strong as the acting is (Hume Cronyn's Dick Van Dyke British accent aside), the interesting potential is largely ruined by the crudely propagandistic nature of the ending.

There are also some curious omissions, explicable only by poor editing - no-one aboard the raft seems particularly surprised that Willy turns out to be the Captain of the U-Boat, for example. I was amazed to discover that Steinbeck penned this lacklustre script, which I can only assume Duff Cooper ran his pen through - Pinter and Losey this is not.

It certainly isn't classic Hitchcock - but it's a milestone along the way.