A German U-boat lies at the heart of the predicament faced by the characters in Lifeboat, Alfred Hitchcock's claustrophobic thriller based on a short story by the great American writer John Steinbeck. Nominated for a number of Academy Awards, it demonstrates just how much less can mean more, with Hitchcock setting the entire movie on a lifeboat adrift on the open ocean. Where Wolfgang Petersen used the U-boat as a microcosm for the ills of warfare, with Lifeboat Hitchcock goes for a broader spectrum of society, with civilians, merchant marines and a German sailor making up those stranded drifting on the ocean. It doesn't take long before the good-natured optimism they initially face their plight with gives way to squabbling, rivalries and ultimately despair, as Hitchcock slowly but surely chips away at the facade of polite society to reveal the potential ruthlessness which lies inside all of us. It is a testament to the illustrious filmography of Alfred Hitchcock that Lifeboat is a relatively minor work - by the standard of most other directors it is a taut, lean exercise in character-driven tension building. Facing controversy for his depiction of both Nazis and African-Americans, Lifeboat was unjustly given a limited release - after all, when it came out the Second World War still raged in Europe and beyond.
