Saboteur: A Closer Look (2001 Video) User Reviews

Oh no, dear boy, I've looked through a camera before

[TBJCSKCNRRQTreviews · 6/10 · 23 October 2010]

This is the featurette on the DVD of Saboteur. It consists of interviews with the crew and the actor who portrayed the villain, clips of the film and stills of a very young Hitchcock(R.I.P.). They talk about his reaction to what he perceived as evil(and how it comes through in the movie), his original and unfortunately cut(by people with no sense of humor; come on, that would have been friggin' hilarious!) cameo, this in relation to the war(WW2), many of the key scenes, that one of the writers also did Rebecca(!) the practical FX(part of the statue was actually to scale!) and the cast(although the stars are barely mentioned and acknowledged at all, and I really have no idea why... what we get isn't bad, but the elephant in the room is impossible to ignore; why was this all we got?). This documentary spoils the picture itself. For a 35 and a half minute piece, this is decent enough, in spite of the glaring omission I just mentioned. It's informational and interesting, and the editing is good. There is a little violence and disturbing content in this. I recommend this to big fans of Alfred. 6/10

I Think They Forgot Somebody

[Randy_D · 5/10 · 16 September 2001]

While Norman Lloyd's commentary about Saboteur is interesting and insightful, it seems to me that the writer could have done a better job acknowledging the two stars of Saboteur.

Norman Lloyd refers to Robert Cummings one time, and Priscilla Lane, the top-billed performer in the movie, is not even mention once!

If this was Saboteur: A Closer Look From Norman Lloyd's Perspective, then I would not have expected anything more. But Saboteur: A Closer Look needed to look a little closer at the stars of the movie.

Dorothy Parker plagiarized Mary Shelley . . .

[pixrox1 · 8/10 · 30 August 2013]

. . . (a story about FRANKENSTEIN) for the scene between Robert Cummings as SABOTEUR suspect Barry and Vaughan Glazer, who plays a blind man living alone in the woods (an exact description of Dr. Frankenstein's science project's only friend). This and other neat tidbits of information are revealed in SABOTEUR: A CLOSER LOOK, on the turn-of-the-century Universal Studios 14-title set of Alfred Hitchcock DVD's. A retrospective "making of" written, directed, and produced by Laurent Bouzereau (who did something similar for each title), it reveals fascinating facts about WWII, especially if the viewer can read between the lines of the redacted parts. For instance, did you know that the U.S. Navy destroyed the world's largest ocean liner--the Normandie--in New York Harbor so that Hitchcock would not risk getting seasick in order to film an example of naval sabotage, upon which the climax of the 1942 feature itself rests? This is the actual truth, since an "extra" on the Turner Classic Movie channel had a newsreel-type short from the 1940s (I think Pete Smith might have narrated it) about the Normandie recently.

Literally talked me to sleep

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 9 August 2016]

"Saboteur: A Closer Look" is a documentary short film from 2000 that focuses on Alfred Hitchcock's "Saboteur", a black-and-white film from almost 75 years ago. This documentary here runs for shortly over half an hour and includes lots of interview footage, almost exclusively actually with people linked to the film. The writer and director is Laurent Bouzereau and he made many film-related documentaries and making-ofs in his prolific career. However, this one here neither got me interested about the film this is on nor about Bouzereau's other works. I found it a very bleak and monotonous presentation without any memorable aspects at all, so that 4 stars is really generous still. This one is only for the biggest fans of "Sabuteur", those who consider it one of Hitchcock's very best, which are certainly not too many. Everybody else should skip it.