Saboteur (1942) is an American wartime thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Robert Cummings as Barry Kane, a California aircraft-factory worker who is falsely accused of sabotage after a fire kills his friend. Kane escapes custody and crosses the United States in search of the real saboteur, Frank Fry, played by Norman Lloyd. Priscilla Lane co-stars as Patricia Martin, who is first drawn into Kane’s flight against her will and later becomes his ally. The film is an early American example of one of Hitchcock’s favourite story patterns: the innocent man pursued by authorities while trying to expose a larger conspiracy. Made during the Second World War, Saboteur combines espionage, propaganda, suspense and road-movie structure, and in many ways anticipates the cross-country chase and monument-based climax of North by Northwest.
Saboteur uses a broad American geography, moving from Southern California to the desert Southwest and finally New York City. Much of the film was produced through a mixture of studio work, matte paintings, second-unit location footage and carefully matched rear-projection material, which was unusually ambitious for a Hollywood thriller of the period. The aircraft factory at the beginning is set in Glendale, but was largely created on studio sets. The western material used the Alabama Hills near Lone Pine, California, including the ghost-town sequence overlooking the sabotage target at Boulder Dam, now better known as Hoover Dam. Springville, California, is also listed among the production’s filming locations. In New York, the film uses Radio City Music Hall for the shoot-out sequence, while the harbour material includes the capsized SS Normandie, which had burned and sunk in February 1942. The film’s most famous location is the Statue of Liberty, where the climax places Barry Kane and Frank Fry high on the monument in one of Hitchcock’s most memorable early set pieces. The torch platform itself was recreated through studio work and effects, but the sequence still gives Saboteur its defining image: wartime sabotage and hidden fascism confronted against one of America’s most symbolic landmarks.
Statue of Liberty
Statue of Liberty has appeared in Saboteur, Planet of the Apes, Superman, Splash, Ghostbusters II, Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, X-Men and many more.
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