Rent Sabotage (1936)
- General info
- Available formats
- Synopsis:
- Karl Verloc (Oskar Homolka), manager of a London cinema, is secretly involved with a gang of European saboteurs who are plotting a massive bomb attack in Piccadilly Circus. With the police already suspicious of Verloc, they place an undercover detective on his trail - can he bring the saboteurs to justice before they perpetrate their outrage on London?
- Actors:
- Sylvia Sidney, Oskar Homolka, Desmond Tester, John Loder, Joyce Barbour, Matthew Boulton, S.J. Warmington, William Dewhurst, Pamela Bevan, Peter Bull, Albert Chevalier, Clare Greet, Charles Hawtrey, Alfred Hitchcock, Martita Hunt, Mike Johnson, Hubert Leslie, Aubrey Mather, Frederick Piper, Fred Schwartz
- Directors:
- Alfred Hitchcock
- Producers:
- Michael Balcon
- Writers:
- Joseph Conrad, Charles Bennett, Ian Hay, Helen Simpson, Alma Reville, E.V.H. Emmett
- Studio:
- Network
- Genres:
- Action & Adventure, Classics, Thrillers
- Collections:
- 10 Films to Watch if You Like: Operation Mincemeat, A History of Cinemas in Films, Award Winners, Bond Villains: The Connery Years, Cinema Paradiso's 2023 Centenary Club: Part 1, Films to Watch If You Like..., Hitchcock in the 1940s, Ireland At the Oscars, A Brief History of Film...
- BBFC:
- Release Date:
- 01/06/2015
- Run Time:
- 76 minutes
- Languages:
- English Dolby Digital 1.0
- Subtitles:
- English
- Formats:
- Pal
- Aspect Ratio:
- Full Screen 1.37:1
- Colour:
- B & W
- BLU-RAY Regions:
- B
- Bonus:
- Introduction by Charles Barr
- On Location featurette, introduced by Robert Powell
- Image gallery
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Reviews (1) of Sabotage
Political Thriller. - Sabotage review by Steve
This has a darker mood than most Alfred Hitchcock films in his British period. It's a loose adaptation of Joseph Conrad's novel The Secret Agent, which is reconstructed into a series of suspenseful set pieces and opportunities for black comedy.
The content requires a skilled dramatic lead and the production is blessed by the brilliant, liquid eyed Hollywood star Sylvia Sidney. This is nearly as much her picture as a Hitchcock. How frustrating that Robert Donat was cast to co-star but backed out due to illness.
Saboteurs are active around London (their aims are vague) and plan to leave a time bomb at Piccadilly Station which is... entrusted to Sylvia's young brother. He dawdles across London unaware of what his package contains. But we know the time of detonation, and Hitch cuts ever more rapidly between clocks, the package and the fatal distractions of the big city.
The staging and editing of this episode are widely praised, though the Master often used the outcome as an example of bad film making. It is a political thriller, and one of the director's best and most suspenseful thrillers with atmospheric location work and many memorable set pieces.