Lifeboat (1943 Alfred Hitchcock)

A fabulous, fascinating film. From the start a great technical achievement. When it begins, with the various objects from the torpedoed ship floating in the water, I wondered whether those shots in Stalker of objects underwater were a reference to this? It's good because it tells you about the ship and some of its passengers, and also that a German submarine was also sunk. That very opening - Talullah Bankhead is filming and she films a sailor who comes right up to the lifeboat and you can see the real him outside the edge of the camera - this is such a throwaway thing, it would be easy to do now, but then?? (I find it funny that all her treasured possessions are lost or damaged one by one.)

That it's entirely set in the studio is another huge achievement, and that despite the rocking of the boat you don't get motion sickness. Sometimes it seems like the boat is rocking, sometimes that the horizon is rising and falling. Maybe I'm still on the Lifeboat, rocking and falling...

Written (with obvious input from the director) by John Steinbeck, adapted by Jo Swerling. It's also beautifully staged, like a stage play, in fact, and a trial run for confined settings that Hitch would later exploit in Rope and Rear Window.

That there's no music adds to the sense of isolation.

Great cast: John Hodiak, William Bendix, Walter Slezak, Mary Anderson, Hume Cronyn, Henry Hull (the Walter Hustonish character), Canada Lee, Heather Angel.

Edited by Dorothy Spencer, who knows in dialogue scenes who to hold on to...

A quite grim film, despite the obvious touches of humour. It's bloody marvellous.

Contrary to the Masters of Cinema release cover, it may be a high definition transfer, but it's in 1.33:1, and not 1:37:1 as stated. And some of it's quite fuzzy. So that's a bit of a disappointment. And we were going to watch the 'Making of' but it was in the wrong aspect ratio, and we're such film snobs that we turned it off!

The moment Bankhead kisses Bendix before his operation is wonderfully touching.

The DP by the way is Glen MacWilliams, whoever he is.