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
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