Saboteur

This apartment had the double-whammy of being both small and having a rather crummy floor layout. It's one apartment in a triplex on a lot with two such buildings, it - like the place in Mountain View - was pretty nice on the inside (nice carpets, newish appliances, even laundry in the apartment and a fireplace!), but it looked right out onto the street with a large window right onto the living room, and all the other windows looked out onto either pavement or a fence. And it wasted a lot of space with a useless wall between the kitchen and living room, and a large but not really usable hallway.

So, another strikeout. But I'll keep looking. I know that there are apartments out there that are basically what I want.

Ultimate frisbee got cancelled again tonight due to rain (it's been raining the last few days), so Subrata, Ben and I decided to go see the Hitchcock film Saboteur tonight.

First, we argued about where to go for dinner. I suggested the Peninsula Creamery, but Ben wasn't too interested, and Subrata said that "he'd been good today" about not eating too much and wanted to avoid the ice cream temptation. So Subrata and Ben convinced me to go for Chinese instead. Which was fine, but after a huge meal I said to Subrata, "So this was healthier than the Peninsula Creamery how?" We surely consumed at least as many calories in deep-fried food as we would have otherwise, never mind that we also ate a lot of rice. Sheesh!

Saboteur (1942) is not to be confused with Sabotage. Appearing the year the US entered World War II, airplane factory worker Barry Kane (Robert Cummings) and his best friend Ken Mason meet a shifty character named Fry (Norman Lloyd). Suddenly a fire breaks out in the factory. Fry hands Barry a fire extinguisher, who passes it to Ken, but it turns out the extinguisher was filled with gasoline, and Ken dies in the act of sabotage. Wrongly accused of starting the fire, Barry escapes from the FBI and pursues Fry, meeting Fry's boss, Charles Tobin (Otto Kruger), a wealthy rancher who turns Barry over to the police. Barry escapes and finds refuge with a blind man, whose niece Pat (Priscilla Lane) tries to turn Barry back over to the police, but Barry foils her and eventually manages to turn her to his side. The rest of the film involves the pair infiltrating the band of saboteurs and attempting to catch Fry to clear Barry, and stop the sabotage of a new ship.

This is another of Hitchcock's "innocent man chased across the country" films, culminating in a scene at the Statue of Liberty. Barry is a clean-cut hero and Pat has a bit of an edge to her, but not much. The film is most impressive for its cinematography: The shot of billowing smoke at the airplane factory, Barry's escape from the police by diving off a tall bridge, the band of sideshow freaks that Barry and Pat meet, the desolation of "Soda City", and the sets of the Statue are all impressive, and make good use of the contrasts in the black-and-white film.

But the film's themes are very heavy-handed and feel rather fake. I don't know much about actual saboteurs during World War II, but the oblique references made to fascism by the saboteurs without any actual Nazis or direct connections to the Axis powers didn't work for me, nor did the flag-waving speeches that Barry makes at various points (which Subrata says he heard were toned down from the original script!). Okay, I can make allowances for the patriotism due to the era in which this aired, but the conflict between two different points of view seems like kids' stuff 60 years later.

File this one under "entertaining adventure film", it's recognizably Hitchcock in much of its suspense, but not one of his best.