![]() Steinbeck failed to grasp just what they had wrought. Some of his careful deceptions would be regarded as smart and heroic if they came from an American in the same spot.Obviously Mr. As Walter Slezak plays him, he is tricky and sometimes brutal, yes, but he is practical, ingenious and basically courageous in his lonely resolve. (Notice, for instance, that no music, only sea sounds are used as background.) Conceded that all of the performances are extraordinarily fine, especially Tallulah Bankhead's shrewd and brittle playing of the parasite and William Bendix's tough-grained, heart-breaking job as the wounded man.There remains the alarming implication, throughout all the action of this film, that the most efficient and resourceful man in this "Lifeboat" is the Nazi, the man with "a plan." Nor is he an altogether repulsive or invidious type. Steinbeck-plus Jo Swerling, who rigged the script-have turned out a consistently exciting and technically brilliant drama of the sea. And the indications are that all of the people are going to revert to their original ways-the tycoon to his "open for business" policy and the parasite to her selfish feminine tricks.Conceded that Mr. It comes as a literal bolt out of the blue-a heaven-sent intervention which descends just after they have been saved (by sheer luck, mind you, and no other) from being run down and crushed by the Nazi ship. "To survive," he had calmly told the people, "one must have a plan."Nor is the eventual salvation of these pathetic souls adrift at sea accomplished through their own volition. "But where to? What for? When we killed the German, we killed our motor." The dying words of the Nazi are a mockery. "Maybe one of us ought to try to row," the tycoon says. And when they finally kill the German in a rush of horrified rage because he has quietly eliminated a delirious survivor while the others slept, they are left in pathetic confusion. When the listless (but not lustless) survivors discover that the German is steering them, not towards Bermuda, as they intended, but towards a mid-ocean Nazi supply ship, they accept the dreary prospect of a German concentration camp as better than death. ![]() #Lifeboat cast fullIn short, it is this German, personification of the Nazi creed, who proves to be the only competent leader in a boat full of ineffectuals.Now, that might be a cogent situation out of which to develop a dramatic switch. It is this resourceful German who amputates the leg of one of the men when none of the other survivors is up to this harrowing task. And very soon it is this German-commander of the sub, it transpires-who assumes command of the lifeboat when the others cannot choose their own leader. These latter are two tough but aimless fellows, a Cockney dreamer and a pensive Negro-all of them clearly indicative of an inarticulate class.In the boat, also, is a German, lone survivor of the submarine which fired the fateful torpedo and was in turn sunk from the stricken ship. Then there is an American business tycoon, likewise opportunistic and cynical two meek and pathetic women and four men of the torpedoed ship's crew. ![]() There is, first, a parasitic woman, representative of the luxury fringe, who is opportunistic and cynical-a picturesque trifler in every respect. Within their battered lifeboat are assembled an assortment of folks who typify various strata of a free, democratic society. ![]() However, they have also given us an allegorical film with a theme which is startling in its broad implications, especially in this critical time.For what the worthy gentlemen have given us, when you look closer than the surface aspects, is a trenchant and blistering symbolization of the world and its woes today. With only nine characters under scrutiny within the limits of a standard ship's lifeboat-an area from which the camera never at any time departs-they have peeled off a tense and vital drama of survivors adrift from a torpedoed ship, absorbing in its revelations of character and its brilliantly pictorialized details. That old master of screen melodrama, Alfred Hitchcock, and Writer John Steinbeck have combined their distinctive talents in a tremendously provocative film-indeed, a surprisingly unique one-titled "Lifeboat," which came to the Astor yesterday. ![]()
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