My perspectives on Alfred Hitchcock's 'Lifeboat'

Alfred Hitchcock's 'Lifeboat'

In this video, I offer my perspectives of Alfred Hitchcock's great film 'Lifeboat' or Titanic Jr.

Alfred Hitchcock's 'Lifeboat': Plot summary

This is a plot summary of director Alfred Hitchcock's film 'Rope'. 

Lifeboat is a 1944 survival drama directed by Alfred Hitchcock and based on the book of the same name by John Steinbeck. When an American Merchant Marine ship bound for London and a German U-boat destroy each other, the survivors must find a way to survive in a lifeboat in the middle of the ocean.

Materialism, racism, elitism, and distrust are among the themes in this film. Like his 1948 film ‘Rope,’ Hitchcock’s Lifeboat uses a minimal number of elements—a boat, the ocean, and the sky. The lifeboat and its relative size against and between the ocean and the sky is a microcosm of planet Earth and the universe.

Summary:

In the Pacific ocean during World War II, an American merchant ship and a German U-boat torpedo each other and sink to the bottom of the ocean. Photographer Constance Porter (Tallulah Bankhead) is the 1st survivor in the lifeboat. She looks elegant and civilized in her fur coat applying lipstick. She takes out her camera to shoot footage of the debris around the boat. She films Kovac (John Hodiak), an engine mechanic on the ship, then helps him into the boat. Kovac, inadvertently knocks Connie’s camera out of her hands and into the ocean. 

One by one, they pull survivors out of the ocean: 

• Sparks, the ship’s radio operator (Hume Cronyn)
• Army nurse Alice Mackenzie (Mary Anderson)
• Industrialist C.J. Rittenhouse (Henry Hull)
• German U-boat Captain, Wili (Walter Slezak)

Joe (Canada Lee) swims to the boat with a young woman and her baby. When the ship sank, Mrs. Higley (Heather Angel) tried to drown her baby but Joe stopped her. Joe is black and Connie addresses him as Charcoal. Gus Smith, (William Bendix) who is German American, has a badly injured leg.

The survivors of the ship argue as to whether or not to throw the German overboard. Kovac is a Czechoslovakian and wants to kill the German but C.J. Ritt believes that they should treat the German as a POW and they keep him in the boat.

Mrs. Higley’s baby is dead and when she falls asleep they put the child into the ocean. Upon waking to find her child gone, Mrs. Higley goes overboard the following night while everyone’s asleep. 

Their compass is broken and no one knows how to get to Bermuda. Kovac takes command of the boat. Wili has a compass but doesn’t tell them. Kovac accidentally knocks Connie’s Scandinavian typewriter overboard.

Gangrene has set in Gus’s right leg. Wili advises them to amputate the leg but Gus is fearful of losing Rosie, his girlfriend back home who likes to dance. Rosie’s a slut. Kovac knows this because he introduced her to Gus. Gus defends her and becomes angry with Kovac. The German is also a surgeon and Gus consents to the amputation. A storm blows in and when it leaves Gus’ right leg is gone. 

Earlier, Wili told them how to get to Bermuda but Sparks suspects foul play.  When Wili falls asleep, Joe frisks Wili and finds a working pocket watch despite the fact that Wili asked Connie for the time earlier. They wake Wili up but a strong storm takes control of the boat. Wili yells out commands in english! Water rushes into the boat. Connie loses her suitcase. The boat loses its sail. 

By the time the storm passes, Wili has taken over the lifeboat and is at the oars rowing and singing. Everyone is laying around limp and exhausted. Mr. Ritt is blowing the flute. Sparks and Ms. Mackenzie are lying side-by-side smiling at each other; Connie and Kovac are doing the same. 

All of their food and water are gone. And all of the elegance and dignity are gone now for Connie. Her hair is down and all of her makeup is washed off. Kovac's exposed torso is covered with tattoos and now, equalized by the storm, they both look like they’re from the lower end of Chicago.

They need water and it rains, but not enough. Gus is delirious with thirst and worries out loud about his Rosie and whether she will accept him with only 1 leg. When no one is looking, Wili pulls a flask of water from his coat and steals a sip. Gus sees Wili drinking the water and Wili pushes him out of the boat. Later, Willi admits to pushing Gus out of the boat to put him out of his misery. Joe pulls the container of water from Wili’s coat. They gang up on Willi and throw him overboard. Now, they have no ‘motor’ as Wili was the only person strong enough to row the boat. Worst of all, they have no compass! 

They need food and water. Connie takes off her diamond bracelet and gives it to Kovac to use as bait to catch a fish. Joe spots a ship and cries out. Everyone forgets the line, the fish, and Connie’s diamond bracelet.

The ship turns out to be an enemy ship. However, an American ship destroys the enemy ship and they’re saved! A German soldier survives the attack and they pull him into the lifeboat. No one trusts the German but Connie sees his injuries and wants to help him despite Ritt’s warning not to do so. As they argue back and forth, the German draws a pistol but Joe knocks the gun loose. The German asks them if they are going to kill him. The end. 

An analysis of Alfred Hitchcock's 'Lifeboat'

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

 Other themes I will also look at are loss, spiritual disconnection, and true happiness. 

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!