The Menace Beneath the Ordinary: Hitchcock's Saboteur (Part Three of Three)

The third method Saboteur employs to criticize fascism involves the dichotomization of characteristics of the democratic Allies and fascist members of the axis such as love and hate, good and evil, right and wrong, just and unjust, and other conflicting concepts. When a butler escorts Kane upstairs into a room with Tobin in the Sutton mansion after failing to escape, Kane, with a defiant patriotic zeal, characterizes the fascist ideology as violent, deceptive, and destined to be defeated:

You certainly make it sound smooth and easy. Well, that's a trick. I know the results of that power you believe in. It killed my friend and is killing thousands like him. That's what you're aiming at, but it doesn't bother you - I can see that. Because you really hate all people… Love and hate. The world's choosing up sides. I know who I'm with. There are a lot of people on my side. Millions of us in every country. And we're not soft. We're plenty strong, and we'll fight standing up on our two feet and we'll win: remember that, Mr. Tobin. We'll win no matter what you guys do. We'll win if takes from now until the cows come home.

This type of polarizing rhetoric lends itself to the cause of rousing the American spirit by fitting the Axis powers within an idealized framework of  “good” versus “evil,” which is historically one of the most effective ways to galvanize support for war. As Roeder describes, “this dichotomized way of seeing linked images Americans devised of the enemy with those they devised of themselves…if the enemy was treacherous, cowardly, and heartless, Americans were fair, courageous, and caring” (88). In addition, the circus freak scene guides the audience’s disdain toward fascism when the midget demands that they turn Kane over to the police while suggesting that a democracy would never condemn Kane to such a fate. Another instance of political imagery that ascribed to the dichotomized mode of sight involved the juxtaposition of the recurring motifs of fire and water throughout the film.The film links the Nazi saboteurs to fire right from the opening scene in which Fry burns down the munitions factory in California. Conversely, Kane’s successes often involve water, such as his escaping from police by leaping from the bridge into the water and his triggering of the fire sprinklers in the Sutton mansion to escape.  Ultimately, this symbolic contrast of fire and water culminates inside the torch of Lady Liberty, which just so happens to be surrounded by water; thus, the “as Fry hides inside the statue, the symbolism is that spies hide under the cloak of liberty.”

The idea that everyone can do their part in the war effort, what Roeder refers to as a “cast of millions,” certainly appears in Saboteur. A clear political overtone of the film is that individuals can do their part in the war and guard against sabotage. At the end of Kane’s heroic journey, the audience leaves with “with the saboteur’s lunge to death, the hero’s (and thus America’s) grasp on liberty seems reaffirmed.” As Roeder describes, “the persistence of the happy ending in some of the bleakest Hollywood war stories demonstrated the strength of forces bending wartime imagery into polarized patterns.” Following this trend of polarization, Hitchcock pits an ordinary, patriotic American Barry Kane against the devious Nazi infiltrators Fry and Tobin to embody the larger struggle between democracy and fascism.

Taken as a whole, Saboteur captures the sentiment of wartime paranoia and the sociopolitical realities that accompanied America’s rise from beneath the shroud of neutrality and entry into the fray of World War II. Amidst lurching from wartime propaganda and moral allegory to contextualizing the evolving cultural realities of the era, the film succinctly summarizes the climate of the United States. The movie levels a tripartite assault on the spuriousness and power-mongering qualities of fascism by exalting democratic values and American ideals, transposing popular caricatures of loyal Americans and saboteurs, and positing all differences within a dichotomized framework.  In this “parable of identity,” Hitchcock attempts to impel people out of complacency by embellishing the film with his own touches of patriotism and warning that anyone around them could be a wolf in sheep’s clothing. In some ways, the movie represents a fusion of his British patriotism with American culture (both political and social). The master, in typical fashion, reveals “the menace beneath the ordinary,” but along an American itinerary.

*Citations Omitted

The Menace Beneath the Ordinary: Hitchcock's Saboteur (Part Two of Three)

Secondly, the film subtly inverts popular caricatures and stereotypes of loyal Americans and saboteurs, thus symbolizing the deceptive nature of fascism. There are two important components to fascism’s deceptiveness related to this film: the looming threat of subversion and the way in which fascist dictators mask their true intentions with populist rhetoric. Saboteur seizes the opportunity provided by the undercurrent of wartime paranoia; in doing so, the film demonstrates that there may be seditious citizens anywhere within American society and draws a broader metaphor to the illusory nature of the fascist promises. In the film, as opposed to saboteurs being depicted as disgruntled, marginalized members of society, Hitchcock portrays them as respectable aristocrats and socialites like Charles Tobin and Mrs. Sutton. On the other hand, the “normal Americans” who enthusiastically aid Kane along his journey are “idiosyncratic and largely peripheral members of society who either live in isolation, like Phillip Martin, or in rootless travel, like the truck driver who first picks Kane up, and the group of sideshow freaks who later hide him from the police.” Whereas Kane is concerned with justice and remains “youthful, passionate, and idealistic,” Tobin himself admits that he seeks “power…as much as [Kane] want[s] [his] job, or that girl” and is “willing to back his tastes with the necessary force.” Generally, the film exhibited that “fifth columnists can be outwardly clean and patriotic citizens, just like normal Americans.”

Moreover, Hitchcock contributes to his audience’s distrust of fascism by adroitly understating, humanizing, and highlighting the duplicity some of the saboteurs.  For example, the affable Mr. Freeman idly chatters with Kane about his son’s haircut and the man guarding Pat Martin in the American Newsreel Company office mutters, “I hope we can get rid of her soon…I promised to take my kid sister to the philharmonic.”

Yet, the most delicate expression of fascism’s spuriousness lies in the persistent imagery of abstract and specific visual patterns referring to the Statue of Liberty (Deutelbaum, 1984, p. 63). In the abstract sense, the shadows in several scenes “radiate outward in a sunburst effect” that closely mirrors the Statue’s diadem. As for concrete images resembling the statue, Tobin’s constant readjustment of his towel in the scene at his ranch is strikingly similar to the drapery of Lady Liberty’s gown. Likewise, the prominent banister in the Sutton mansion “echoes the curve and closely-spaced openings of the viewing ports inside the Statue’s diadem.” Additionally, the image of Fry’s outreached arm when dangling from the Statue significantly parallels Lady Liberty’s upraised arm. These visual manifestations of Statue’s components tend to appear in association with the saboteurs rather than the patriotic citizens, signifying that “these parts of a bogus Statue of Liberty are hidden among other images in much the same way that the film’s saboteurs – bogus Americans – are hidden among the Americans they superficially resemble.” By manipulating plot themes, character personalities, visual techniques, and dialogue, Hitchcock “casts a general aesthetic truth about the uncertainty of appearances into a utilitarian cautionary tale declaring the need for viewers to reconsider their presumptions about the loyalty of individual on the basis of their appearances” in order to combat the fascist threat.

The Menace Beneath the Ordinary: Hitchcock's Saboteur (Part One of Three)

Saboteur, arguably Hitchcock’s “first truly American film,” appraises the American physical, political, and cultural landscape at the onset of World War II. The unapologetic infusion of patriotism based on American egalitarian ideals, such as the presumption of innocence until proven guilty and the ability to attain justice via democratic vote, into Hitchcock’s tale of false accusation offers a perspicacious “snapshot of [America] wringing its hands over… entry into the war. ”The attendance of approximately 80 senators and 350 members of the House of Representatives at the film’s premiere and the film’s inclusion of footage of the recently capsized French liner Normandie corroborate the intensely political aura surrounding the film. Commenting on the ills wartime paranoia, Saboteur subtly links the way in which some Americans quelled their anxieties by impetuously responding to crises (like the burning of the munitions factory, which led to injustices like the allegations against Kane) to the tendency to scapegoat endemic to fascism. Amidst the unceasing action of this fast-paced propaganda film, Hitchcock directly, and often implicitly, criticizes fascists for disguising their true intentions and craving excessive power in three ways: extolling American democratic virtues, inverting stereotypes of loyal Americans and saboteurs, and dichotomizing American democracy as “good” and Axis fascism as “evil.”

           The first, and perhaps most palpable, albeit indirect, expression of aversion to fascism occurred by means of several characters’ trumpeting of the rights of an American citizen. When Kane stumbles upon an isolated cottage after escaping from police custody, he encounters Phillip Martin, a blind, old man, who soon declares “it is [his] duty as an American citizen to believe a man innocent until he is proven guilty” and resists being misled by alarmism. Mr. Martin’s statement provides a contrast the “round up the usual suspects” attitude attributed to fascism (and in this case, even some authorities in the US) and represents Hitchcock’s prescription against the ills of wartime paranoia. Moreover, Uncle Martin’s attitude demonstrates the ability of a democratic citizen to resist centralized power, which leads the audience to the conclusion that this could not happen under fascist rule. Similarly, the scene in which Barry Kane and Pat Martin board the circus troupe’s train allegorizes how the democratic process triumphs over malevolent fascist tendencies. The human skeleton calls for a vote on the basis that they are “a democracy,” and when the militaristic midget rejects his proposition and demands compliance with the authorities, he is consequently labeled a “fascist” by the skeleton. The film conveys that the only way to attain justice (in this case, aiding the innocent Kane) is through the democratic process. In another instance, Pat Martin justifies her decision to turn Kane in to the authorities by proclaiming that a saboteur’s crime is “worse than murder.” Pat’s rationale reveals her belief that American citizens have a unique responsibility to each other, particularly to the soldiers fighting for the freedoms that Americans enjoy; she implies that if Kane were a saboteur, he would be endangering not only lives, but also freedom itself. Kane’s admonition to Tobin, “even if don’t stop you, someone else will… you can’t last in a country like this,” exudes the essence of the concept of shared responsibility among citizens and faith in the commonality of American ideals. By portraying the righteousness and transparency of democratic principles and shared American beliefs, the film implies fascism’s ideological inferiority.