THE HURRY OF TIME WASTE

Sequence analysis from Sabotage (Alfred Hitchcock, 1936)

Sabotage (Alfred Hitchcock, 1936) is a film inspired and filmed in the London of the early 20th century. It tells the story of a Scotland Yard detective who is trying to catch a saboteur who will manage to put a bomb in London. The narrative story is focused in Verloc’s life. This man and his wife, are the owners of a cinema that’s rarely visited. On a fateful day, he sends his brother in law Stevie to deliver a package. Sadly, it will never reach its destiny because the bomb that the package carried and that was programmed for a certain time, will explode on a tram, killing Stevie and all the other passengers. This reveals Verloc as the saboteur and responsible for the power outage of the city and the master of the bomb.

The sequence that is going to be analysed is the “Bus Scene” were Stevie carries the package that Ms. Verloc gave him on a previous scene, right to Piccadilly. This scene goes from 00:49:24 to 00:54:45 on the link source. As far as I’m concerned, this sequence is one of the most important ones of the film because it marks a turning point in the plot of the film and, of course in the Verloc’s family life. If the bomb arrived on time to its destiny, Stevie wouldn’t have died and maybe, Mrs. Verloc wouldn’t have killed her husband on a later scene.

The sequence starts as the camera takes a close look to the package that fades into a note (Figure 1), because in the middle of all the stimulating show that the streets have drowned the boy during the last scene, the audience needs to remember the importance of that delivery: “DON’T FORGET THE BIRDS WILL SING AT 1.45”. From a previous scene, we know that the birds’ singing is just an euphemism for the explosion. As soon as this first reminder appears, we can hear on the background the sound of a clock tickling. In this scene we can appreciate the obsession that the author has with time, as there are a lot of clocks. This drowns the audience into an anxious hurry that goes with the kid because Stevie doesn’t know what he’s carrying, but we do.

The hurry seems to stop during the parade for the audience and for the kid. In a sudden, we take a close up to Stevie’s face enjoying the show for the fist time and forgetting about his duty (Figure 2). But the camera shows us the package again (Figure 3) while it fades into a clock gears (Figure 4). Time is passing by way too quickly and we as the viewers start to rush because the scene is taking too long.

Finally, he manages to arrive to the bus. The ticket collector realises that the boy is carrying flammable films (Figure 6). This is a warning, because with the explosion, the film will set on fire. For the audience, now more than ever, the rush of the boy is more important. However, our character starts playing with a small puppy (Figure 7). In this scene, Hitchcock uses the Kuleshov effect to create that hurry to the audience. He mixes shots of several clocks (Figures 8, 10, 12, 15, 16, 17) the package (Figures 9, 11), the traffic (Figure 13, 14) and the boy with the puppy (Figure 7), all with a mysterious soundtrack that makes us anxious. Hitchcock is here showing his montage skills that help him create his amazing tension in thrillers. Eventually, the climax of the scene arrives. The montage shows us speedy, several images of the package (Figure 18) and with the explosion (Figures 19, 20), the boy gets killed with all the passengers, arriving to the more decisive point of the film.

Hitchcock, while discussing this scene with Truffaut, confesses that he made a mistake by killing the boy. He could have done it differently. “I once committed a grave error in having a bomb, from which I had extracted a great deal of suspense,... I had the thing go off, which I should never have done. Because they needed the relief from their suspense...”and he adds “But I made a mistake. I let the bomb go off and kill someone. Bad technique. Never repeated it” (2000: 1). However, we know this is not exactly true. Years later, Hitchcock uses the same technique on Psycho (1960) by killing Marion, who is the protagonist for the audience, in the middle of the movie. Having in consideration the name of the film, this may be read as a sabotage itself. I don’t really think that Hitchcock would have acted differently. This direction choice has a full meaning, because, as I said before, the boy being killed is what drags Mrs. Verloc to her sorrow and pain, and what makes her hate her husband to death. The sabotage surpasses the big screen to the real world and Hitchcock becomes the real world Verloc, sabotaging his own work.

On the opening of this film, Hitchcock shows us a clipping of the definition of “sabotage” on the dictionary. It says: “wilful destruction of buildings or machinery with the object of alarming a group of persons or inspiring public uneasiness” (Figure 21). With this shot, the author is trying to tell us exactly what’s going to happen on the film we’re about to see in the diegetic world and in the real one. The quote reveals the intention of the protagonist, that will be shown seconds later and pointed as guilty. Besides, he inscribes himself as the director of the film just on this clipping, pointing himself as guilty as well for inspiring the audience uneasiness with his murder. This type of opening, that literally explains the title of the film, served for inspiration for future films, for example, on Quentin Tarantino’s famous Pulp Fiction (1994). Sabotage (1936) is one of Hitchcock’s early British films, and this reference proves us how important and innovating Alfred Hitchcock’s work has became for the history of cinema.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY:

SMITH, SUSAN (2000): Hitchcock: Suspense, Humor and Tone, London BFI publishing

FIMOGRAPHY:

HITCHCOCK, ALFRED (1936): Sabotage (can be found in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0c93C8XaK-o&feature=youtu.be )