Lifeboat

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Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Stars: Tallulah Bankhead, Walter Slezak, William Bendix, John Hodiak

Year: 1943 Running Time: 96 mins Rating:

Hitchcock takes to the high seas with this wartime tale based on a story by John Steinbeck. A torpedo attack on a merchant ship leaves a handful of survivors to determine their own fate on a lifeboat. Their predicament becomes even more complicated when they haul aboard a German from the U-boat that put them there. With little room to manoeuvre, cap'n Hitch steers his astutely cast crew (brassy Tallulah Bankhead, dazed and confused William Bendix, shifty Walter Slezak) through storms of high tension and morally murky waters.

Review

Not many directors would have dared to make an entire suspense film set on board a lifeboat, but Alfred Hitchcock did it during World War Two, and it comes off pretty well.

He even squeezes in his customary guest appearance - via an advertisement for a weight-loss treatment on a newspaper floating past the boat.

Forthright performances by Tallulah Bankhead, William Bendix and Walter Slezak (as the only German) keep the tension crackling in this yarn based on a story by John Steinbeck.