Lifeboat

Seeking a creative challenge after several years' worth of fairly elaborate melodramas, director Alfred Hitchcock stages all of the action in Lifeboat in one tiny boat, adrift in the North Atlantic. The boat holds eight survivors of a Nazi torpedo attack: sophisticated magazine writer/photographer ...more

Lifeboat shows what the disaster films of the '70s and beyond might have been like if they were shorn of their special effects and forced to concentrate on character rather than activity -- and if they were directed by a true master, of course. Today's audiences, weaned on The Poseidon Adventure et al, might find the basic setup (toss in a handful of characters from every walk of life and force them to work together for their mutual survival) a little trite, but director Alfred Hitchcock and his ...more