Lifeboat sounds like torture- for the filmmaker. You have to make an entire movie in one small location, with a series of people trapped in one space and make it visually interesting. On top of that, the location is surrounded on all sides by water, which means you must either go out to ocean and have a Jaws-like nightmare shoot, use a tank in the studio that costs a lot, or use rear-screen projection that looks fake. If you choose that last action, close to the entire movie could be a special effect.
Despite the fact that it is a work of major technical prowess, Lifeboat is a considerable artistic achievement as a drama, and is never stagey nor boring. I spent about the first fifteen minuets of the movie trying to figure out the techniques Hitchcock was using, and then I just got into the movie, which shows they worked.
What Hitchcock choose to do was build an extremely small set and use rear screen projection, which works surprisingly well (it almost always looks better in black and white). Although there are some shots where the camera's bobbing doesn't quite match the backgrounds, for the most part the illusion works and we are drawn in to the world of the characters, which is simultaneously huge and claustrophobic.
Based on a novella by John Steinbeck, Lifeboat opens during World War II, as an American ocean liner is torpedoed. The first to make it to boat is rich photographer Constance Porter (Tallulah Bankhead) who had enough time to put on her fur coat and jewels before boarding the boat (by herself). Gradually, she picks up a series of passengers: a tough as nails sailor named John Kovac (John Hodiak), who forms shares an attraction with Constance, the somewhat more sensitive sailor "Sparks" Garrett (Hume Cronyn), George Spencer, a good-natured black steward (Canada Lee), Alice Mackenzie (Mary Anderson) a British nurse who lost her boyfriend in the war and is somewhat hopeless, Mrs. Higgins (Heather Angel), a young and very sick woman with a baby, Gus, (William Bendix), a wounded stoker who cannot walk and Charles Rittenhouse (Henry Hull), a millionaire whose money is worthless in the present circumstance. After awhile they pick up another survivor: Willy (Walter Slezak), a Nazi from the ship that sank them. The group is without a compass, but Willy claims that he can steer them in the direction of the nearest Allied ship, and although no one trusts him, only a few show much interest in stopping him.
Aside from the obvious thriller aspect (will the Nazi trick them? Will they be rescued?) the movie is golden opportunity for social commentary, which takes a decidedly populist tone in the film. Rittenhouse in an pretentious asshole (albeit a good natured one) and Constance becomes progressively more likable as she looses her valuables over the course of the film. The content of the movie is surprisingly adult and well rounded, especially considering the fact that it was made in the '40s, when complex characters and drama was not to be found much in American cinema.
In fact, Hitchcock's refusal to use stereotypes got him in trouble, as many accused the film as showing the Nazi in too sympathetic a light, apparently wanting a drooling cartoon character. The charge, though ridiculous, hurt the film at the time but the portrayal of the antagonists means that Lifeboat is one of the very few decent American films about WWII produced during the conflict. Although its reputation has only improved over the years, in many ways, Lifeboat is still one of Hitchcock's most underrated movies.
Lifeboat (1944)