SPOILER ALERT!
“Let’s see,” you are saying to yourself, “which Hitchcock movie was Saboteur?” That was the one where the bad guy is hanging from the Statue of Liberty until he loses his grip and falls to his death.
Now that we’ve cleared that up, the bad guy’s name is Frank Fry (Norman Lloyd). The movie begins in an airplane factory during World War II. At the end of the day shift, Barry Kane (Robert Cummings) and his friend Ken Mason are heading to the counter where food is served when they bump into Fry, who spills his mail on the floor. Barry picks it up to give it to him, but Fry is surly and unappreciative. As Fry walks off, Barry sees a hundred-dollar bill that was left behind. Remembering the name he saw on the envelope, he finds Fry to give it back to him, but Fry takes the money without saying anything in the way of thanks.
Suddenly, fire breaks out where the planes are painted. They all rush to that area. Fry hands Barry the fire extinguisher, but Mason takes it from him and runs toward the fire. We see Mason being consumed in an inferno. It turns out that the extinguisher was filled with gasoline.
When interviewed by the police, Barry tells them what happened, but when it turns out there is no record of a Frank Fry working at the plant, they suspect that it was Barry that started the fire and knowingly handed Mason the gasoline-filled extinguisher. Barry gets away before the police can arrest him. He decides he must find Fry to prove that he exists, thereby clearing himself of the charge.
It is a familiar trope, the innocent man eluding the police so that he can clear himself by bringing the guilty party to justice. Has anything like that ever happened in real life? I doubt it. But no matter how unrealistic that may be, it works quite well in the movies. And while on the subject of what is not realistic, I must say that there was absolutely no reason for Fry to hand Barry the extinguisher. Whoever got there first would pick up that extinguisher himself, there being no need for Fry to make sure that it happened. He should have been heading for the exit while everyone else was preoccupied.
Along the way, in his search for Fry, Barry has to kidnap Pat Martin (Priscilla Lane) because she thinks he is the saboteur, and she would otherwise go to the police. “You look like a saboteur,” Pat says to Barry accusatively. Inasmuch as Barry is played by Robert Cummings, what are we to make of this remark?
First of all, there is reality. We all know that as a general rule, saboteurs do not have a distinctive look. Now, inasmuch as World War II had just broken out, I suppose that if Barry had been Japanese or German (someone with blond hair and a slight accent), her remark would have been appropriate. But Barry does not appear to be either German or Japanese. (No, I didn’t forget about the Italians, who were also one of the Axis Powers. But even in World War II, Hollywood always portrayed Italians as patriotic Americans, even if they were gangsters.)
Second, there is typecasting. A movie producer might call up Central Casting and say, “We’re making a spy movie. Do you have anyone who looks like a saboteur? If so, send him over for an interview.” And then they might send over someone like Norman Lloyd.
Or they might send over Alan Baxter, who plays Mr. Freeman, another saboteur. Baxter often played sinister characters, but in this movie, he is also effeminate, presumably a homosexual. When this movie was made, explicit references to homosexuality were forbidden by the Production Code, so movies had to be content with queer flashes. Believing Barry to be a fellow spy, Freeman talks to him about his family:
Freeman: Sometimes I wish my younger child had been a girl. In fact, my wife and I argue over a little idiosyncrasy I have. I don’t want his hair cut short until he’s much older. Do you think it’d be bad for him?
Barry: I don’t know. It might be.
Freeman: When I was a child, I had long golden curls. People used to stop to admire me.
Barry: Things are different nowadays. A haircut might save him a lot of grief.
Back when this movie was made, anyone who appeared to be a homosexual was either a weakling or a villain, both of which apply to Freeman. In any event, when asked to send over someone that looked like a saboteur, Central Casting might send over Normal Lloyd or Alan Baxter, but they would not send over Robert Cummings.
Because neither reality nor typecasting would make anyone say of Robert Cummings that he looks like a saboteur, it is odd that Pat would say that he does. Furthermore, she has a very good reason for thinking he is a saboteur, which has nothing to do with his looks. When she first met him, she saw that he was wearing handcuffs, and she realized that he was the fugitive the police were looking for.
Actually, it is precisely because Barry does not look like a saboteur that he is able to avoid the police. Earlier in the movie, Barry is arrested. After he bolts from the police car when it had to come to a stop, he jumps from the bridge into the river below. The truck driver that had earlier given him a ride recognizes him, and he misdirects the police so that Barry can escape, giving Barry an “OK” hand signal. Now, why would he do that? I would have helped the police by pointing out where Barry was hiding. All we can conclude is that the truck driver figured Barry did not look like a criminal, so he helped him escape.
Barry takes shelter in the house of a blind man, Philip Martin. It is here that Pat makes her entrance into the movie, because she is his niece. When she arrives at her uncle’s house shortly after Philip and Barry have become acquainted, she sees the handcuffs that her uncle already knew about on account of his acute hearing. She says he should have turned Barry in to the police. Her uncle accuses her of being cruel. He assures her that Barry is not dangerous. And besides, he argues, a man is innocent until proven guilty. (That’s a nice piece of circular reasoning: since he hasn’t been proven guilty, he is innocent; and an innocent man shouldn’t be turned over to the police.) Now, because Philip is blind, he obviously cannot be coming to these incredible conclusions simply on account of Barry’s looks. However, he can hear the sound of Barry’s voice, and by virtue of that kind of appearance, Philip tells Pat that he can see intangible things like innocence.
Pat pretends to go along with what her uncle wants, which is to take Barry to a blacksmith to get the handcuffs off, but she tries to take him to the police instead. That doesn’t work, however, and after some complications, they find themselves in the company of some circus freaks. Some of them want to turn Barry over to the police, who are inspecting the circus trucks, but the deciding vote belongs to the bearded lady, who blathers about how fine it is that Pat has stuck with Barry through his difficulties, and therefore they must be good people; much in the way, I suppose, that we know that Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker were good people on account of the way Bonnie stuck with Clyde through his difficulties too. It makes about as much sense as when earlier a man and a woman saw Barry kidnap Pat, dragging her into a car against her will, and the woman said, “My, they must be terribly in love.” Apparently, Barry doesn’t look like a rapist or a serial killer either.
What these three instances—that of the truck driver, the blind man, and the bearded lady—have in common is that appearances, in one form or another, make people decide to thwart the police and help the fugitive. Toward the end of the movie, Charles Tobin (Otto Krüger), one of the villains, says of Barry that he is noble, fine, and pure, and that is why he is misjudged by everyone. But save for the police, who are simply going by what evidence they have, Barry is not misjudged by others. The point of this mistaken remark is to show just how much evil foreigners underestimate Americans. The idea is that Americans, being basically noble, fine, and pure, can readily see the goodness in others, which is why they are willing to help a fugitive from justice escape from the police: they can just tell from Barry’s appearance that he is noble, fine, and pure. Of course, Otto Krüger is of German descent, which is why he was selected to play this part.
There is one point in this movie where Barry’s appearance works against him. He and Pat end up at a charity affair being given by a Mrs. Sutton, a wealthy woman that is also one of the spies. It is here that the conversation with Tobin occurs. Barry and Pat manage to escape onto the dance floor, where there are a lot of people that do not realize that Mrs. Sutton and Mr. Tobin are spies. But when Barry tries to tell one of the guests that “the whole house is a hotbed of spies and saboteurs,” he is dismissed out of hand. You see, it’s a formal affair, and as the guest points out to Barry, who is just wearing a suit, “You’re not even dressed.” It all goes to show that ordinary citizens like the truck driver, the blind man, and the bearded lady are the real backbone of this country, while the snooty rich are more concerned with maintaining their privileges over the rabble than in protecting this country from the enemy.
There is a scene where Fry and his fellow saboteurs try to sink a ship as it is being launched. It appears that Barry has thwarted him. But later, while Fry is in a car, he looks out the window and sees a ship lying on its side in the water. As long as that shot was going to be in the movie, Hitchcock should have let it appear that Fry was successful in his second act of sabotage. Instead, we find ourselves wondering, “Well, did he sink that ship or not?”
That he might have sunk that ship led to objections on the part of the War Department, and Hitchcock said that the Navy opposed having this scene in the movie because it made it look as though they failed to do their job in protecting that ship. So, while the government is printing posters that say, “Loose lips sink ships,” that same government doesn’t want us to think that ships actually get sunk.
This is followed by a scene in which Fry, in his effort to escape, runs into a movie theater. Just as he starts firing his gun, someone in the movie starts firing his gun, making it difficult to tell which shots are real and which are part of the movie.
So, what with Pat’s initial reluctance to believe that Barry is innocent, the man at the ball refusing to believe Barry because he is not formally attired, and this scene in the theater, there are some gestures in this movie toward the message that appearances can be deceiving. But overall, the casting works against this message, reassuring us that you can tell just by looking who is noble, fine, and pure on the one hand, and who is base, gross, and adulterated on the other.
If this movie had been intended to alert Americans of the danger of enemy agents in their midst during World War II, it would have cast against type, letting Otto Krüger, Norman Lloyd, or Alan Baxter play Barry, the innocent man, and letting Robert Cummings play one of the spies. Then the movie would have driven home the point that you cannot tell by a person’s appearance whether he is good or evil. Let’s imagine Norman Lloyd playing the role of Barry, the innocent man. In such a movie, Pat’s remark that Barry looks like a saboteur would make sense, and the truck driver, the blind man, and the bearded lady would be suspicious of Barry instead of trusting. Finally, when the married couple see Barry dragging Pat into the car, they would immediately call the police. Instead, the movie seems intent on assuring the wartime audience that they can just rely on appearances, which is a much more comforting notion.
Hitchcock complained about being forced to use Robert Cummings in this movie, thinking him wrong for the role, on account of his comic face. Given this insistence on the part of Universal that he use Cummings in this movie, Hitchcock should have turned this fait accompli into an asset by making him be the saboteur.