Elisabeth Karlin

A Sea Change: Is Lifeboat Improving with Age?

On the morning of November 9, 2016 words failed me and so I shared a screenshot out of a movie from 1944. It showed six bedraggled lifeboat survivors, their faces a mix of horror and contempt as it hits them that they have surrendered their fate to a captain who does not have their best interests at heart. Lifeboat may not be a masterpiece or even top-shelf Hitchcock but this unsung film that defied a bundle of cinematic conventions has never seemed so potent as it is right now. Among other things, Lifeboat with its microcosm of humanity reminds us of the fragility of democracy while sneaking in the lesson that if we don’t do our thinking for ourselves, if we don’t strive for allyship and unity, we are hopelessly adrift. When we talk about 100 years of Hitchcock and consider how the old man has aged, we can easily make the case that the lot of his films have withstood the test of time. But for me, Lifeboat in particular, gets better and better. Beyond its forward outlook on sexual, class, and racial politics, what really stands up is how each character transcends the archetype they were fashioned on. They serve as both representative and recognizable individuals—each one a story. Hitchcock remains relevant because his currency is human nature. And in Lifeboat a movie that is free from movie stars, background music, opulent sets and costumes, and even plot, human nature is boiled down to its very essence.

About
HitchCon Advisory Board member. Elisabeth Karlin revels in the art of the movies and the life of the theater. She is an award-winning playwright who sometimes scribbles about film. Her plays have been seen on stages in New York and Los Angeles and have been published by Next Stage Press and Smith and Kraus. Her writing on Alfred Hitchcock includes Beyond the Blonde: The Dynamic Heroines of Hitchcock  and Lamb to the Slaughter for the Hitchcock Annual; Things Left Undone: Crimes of Passivity in Vertigo for the Vertigo 65 Conference in Dublin. She has also been a frequent contributor to HitchCon and to The Alfred Hitchcock Geek blog on a wide range of themes inspired by The Master.