An analysis of themes from Alfred Hitchcock's film 'Lifeboat'
Lifeboat is a 1944 film by directed by Alfred Hitchcock based on the novel of the same name by John Steinbeck and stars Tallulah Bankhead, Hume Cronyn, John Kodiak, William Bendix, and Canada Lee as Joe the porter. The entire film takes place in a lifeboat. Its passengers are stranded in the North Atlantic Ocean after their ship and a German U-boat exchange torpedoes and both sink to the bottom of the ocean. The plot of the film focuses on the divisions of the members of the boat and how those divisions are magnified under stress. In this analysis, I will look at the following divisions and how they are illustrated by the way those in the lifeboat interact with each other:
- Stereotypes
- Class
- and national divisions
Divisions
Stereotypes
- At 55:25:00 on the DVD, Joe is stereotyped as a thief and ordered to frisk Wili’s pockets while he is asleep
- Throughout the entire film, Connie's favorite phrase is “Some of my best friends are…” a phrase with historical racist implications
Class
- At 26:40 into the film, Ritt, who is a ship builder, assumes command of the boat by privilege even though he knows nothing about sea navigation. No one on the boat feels worthy of taking command even though all of them are equal since they have no compass (Joe is left out of this discussion). Sparks recommends Kovac but Connie is against the idea of an oil man being captain
- Connie calls Joe, the black man, charcoal
- Throughout the movie, Connie’s favorite phrase is “Why, some of my best friends are…”
- The irony of the film is that Connie pretends to be upper class but she is actually from the packing house section of Chicago like Kovac, or as she refers to it, the gutter. She was low-class but worked her way “up” by bartering her soul and marrying her way up the ladder. Each item she loses represents each of those marriages—the typewriter, the silk stocking, the fur coat, the suitcase, and especially the diamond bracelet that started it all. At 1:06:00 on the DVD, she tells all of this to Kovac. This is also why she tells him that the bracelet got her out of the gutter. Wearing the bracelet put her in the class with the men she used to move out of the gutter, fooling them into believing that she was in their class. What is also ironic about this scene is that Kovac has principals. Even though he is just an oilman and is from Chicago’s South Side, he refuses to lower himself for a woman the likes of Connie, bracelet or no bracelet. She feels lowered by his rejection which places him above her; this is written all over her face as Wili fixes the clasp on her bracelet, the clasp that was broken by Kovac’s rejection of her.
At 1:19:52 on the DVD, Ritt and Kovac play a game of poker to pass the time. Their contest represents labor versus management. Kovac, who maintains his integrity throughout the film, —especially by not falling for Connie and symbolically compromising his soul to move up in class and also at the beginning of the film where he returns a $20.00 bill to Ritt that he found floating with the debris— seems to win every hand. When Ritt finally gets a winning hand, 4 deuces, Connie, who’s looking over Kovac’s shoulder: “Looks like you’ve stepped out of your class this time,” she says to Kovac before the wind blows the winning cards out of Ritt’s hand. The dynamics of class are switched with Kovac playing the upper class and Ritt, the poor underclass who, no matter what, seems born to lose. And like those crushed on the bottom of society, Ritt becomes angry and violent. Ritt speaks for the underclasses in this exchange:
Kovac: “I had a full house!”
Ritt: “And I had four deuces!”
Kovac: “How do I know you had four deuces?”
Ritt: “You ought to know. You made the cards, didn’t you? And you marked ‘em, too! They are crooked, and you are crooked!”
Ethnic
Gus’s original surname is Schmidt but out of shame for his German heritage, changes it to Smith
Loss
Everyone in the boat loses what they love the most:
- Mrs. Higley loses her child and her own life when she jumps overboard
- Right at the beginning of the film, Connie loses her camera, then her typewriter, silk stockings, fur coat. Later, she loses her luggage
- Businessman C.J. Rittenhouse loses the poker game he was involved in on the boat that got sunk. On the lifeboat, he loses 6 boxes of cigars. He loses the winning hand in a poker game with Kovac when a strong wind blows the cards out of his hand
- Ashamed of his German heritage, Gus changes his name from Schmidt to Smith. He loses his right leg to gangrene and he loses his promiscuous girlfriend named Rosie who loves dancing and who, he feels, won’t accept him with 1 leg
Spiritual disconnection
Everyone in the boat is seeking his and her own idea of happiness, happiness defined by things. All of these lies are like Wili, the German enemy, rowing them towards eventual ruin. This disconnection from spiritual happiness, or God, is also illustrated by Ritt’s inability to recite the 23rd Psalm. But Joe’s connection with God is evident when he takes up the prayer from Ritt and recites it with ease. Another metaphor for spiritual disconnection and unhappiness is the broken compass which is ‘the way’ to God and happiness. Also, everyone in the boat puts all of their trust and faith in people and things. At 1:24:00 into the film Ritt laments: “When we killed the German we killed our motor,” but Joe counters by saying, “No. We still got a motor” as he looks up to the sky. So, in addition to loss, the film’s other themes are man’s disconnection from God and attachment to things outside of God.
Man defined by things
- Ritt, the oilman, defines himself by his wealth
- Gus Smith defines himself by his dancing ability
- Connie defines herself by her typewriter, her camera, her fur coat, but most of all, she defines herself by her diamond bracelet which represents the upper class, her heart, and the bait she uses to hook up with other men
- Will defines himself by his strength and superior intelligence
Kovac has his principles which Connie spends a great deal of energy trying to get him to compromise
Man’s faith in things
- Ritt has faith in his money
- Connie’s faith is in her diamond bracelet or her ability to seduce men
- Wili, the German, has faith in his strength and intelligence
- Gus Smith has faith in his legs and dancing ability
- Having no compass, everyone puts their faith in Wili’s ability to get the boat to Bermuda
Joe, who is black, is the only person on the boat connected to God and the only person who puts all his faith in God.
True happiness
Of all the people in the Lifeboat, Joe is the only person who is married, has a family and seems to live a moral decent life. He has very little financially working as the ship’s porter but he seems happy and content. By contrast, the others on the boat seem unhappy and are involved in empty and dysfunctional relationships without love or real happiness:
The women
Ms. Mackenzie is in an affair with a married man in London
Connie’s self-worth is tied to her diamond bracelet (her identitification with society's upper class and her charms which she uses as bait). She marries men for money and as soon as she sees a better man or opportunity to advance herself she dumps the one she’s with
Mrs. Higley is the exception because she has a baby, something real that she can love. When the child drowns, Mrs. Higley jumps overboard
The Men
Sparks, a merchant ship radio operator, lives under the constant threat of being torpedoed by German U-boats
Gus is in a relationship with a promiscuous woman named Rosie who loves to go out and dance. He’s afraid that she won’t want him after he loses his right leg to gangrene and he has good reason to feel this way because of her past and the fact that Kovac knew her before when she dated another guy whom she maintains contact with
Kovac wears the names of all the women that left him tattooed on his body. One of these names is bigger than the others and stands out, most likely the one that broke his heart. This is why he hates Connie’s bracelet because he knows that some man who loved her gave it to her and she dumped him.
What it all really boils down to
Food and water—when the storm washes away everything, these are all that matter. In the end it’s about survival. Connie before the storm is civil and humane, especially when it comes to how they treat the German Wili. But after days with no food or water, she becomes violent. Anybody is capable of anything under the right circumstances. Without the bare essentials, none of the luxuries she values before the storm matters except the diamond bracelet and later she uses it as bait to fish with.
The deeper meaning of her using the bracelet to catch fish is that she told Kovac that she used the bracelet to marry up in class. When Connie hands the bracelet to Kovac, he smiles because she is also giving up what she uses to bait and deceive men with and also giving him her heart. The bracelet is also a reminder to him of deception because of what she did to get it. But as soon as Joe spots a ship, she drops the fish, or Kovac, for a bigger fish and as a result loses her bracelet and the fish. The ship turns out to be a German supply ship but it is destroyed by a U.S. Navy battleship. The enemy ship blowing up is an omen of some inevitable disaster somewhere down the line with those other men. But God shows her grace and destroys the ship to warn her that going after the bigger fish could result in not only winding up with no fish but could also result in her losing her life!
The appearance of the young German soldier at the end of the film represents a test for Connie. Did she learn from Wili, the German who misled them earlier? The young, wounded German is yet another man playing on Connie’s weaknesses and lusts. Mr. Ritt—the oldest person on the boat— who represents experience even asks her whether she’d learned from Wili. The soldier finally draws his gun and once again Connie faces certain destruction. But once again, God shows his grace and saves her through Joe who knocks the gun out of the German’s hand!
