A Dream of Hitchcock by Murray Pomerance;

Author:Murray Pomerance;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 2018-02-27T16:00:00+00:00

FREEDOM

Writing of the proclivity of its citizens, old and new, for more than a hundred and fifty years, to entertain a glorious vision of their state as utopian garden in the face of the agonizing journey westward, in the presence of rivers surging, and with population increasing through the immigration of zealous easterners who were eager to divide and sell off land; to cherish ideals through the troubles with water and troubles with manufacturing as the aircraft industry dwindled away, Didion remarks of California that it “likes to be fooled” (86). It may serve a deeper understanding of Saboteur to consider some of its villainous types less as a deeply and essentially malignant force than as well-meaning workers taken in by glamorous promises and a handsome smile.

Yeoman farmers or workers as they may once have been, the dream of bounty and sustenance from the work of one’s own hands may have failed for them, so that in desperation they sought a different, more equivocal kind of labor; or, indeed—more ironically—they may have become entirely convinced that their work to help detain Barry and Pat, or to destroy parts of the American military establishment, is itself a noble endeavor, a guarding of America’s truest, deepest interests—old interests, agrarian interests—from the incursion of a high capitalism that would erode the national spirit. We are given no details in the film of Fry’s engagement on the side of evil; or of Mr. Freeman’s or Neilson’s, the two gracious henchmen Barry and Pat find at Soda City and with whom they voyage eastward in flight from the law.

But of the ringleader Tobin we are given a very sharp portrait: brief but telling. When we meet him at the ranch, there is a sun-tanned glow upon his features and a genteel polish to his language and manner. It is unmistakable that he is wealthy—that he represents the claims of the super-rich. When we meet him a second time at Mrs. Sutton’s home on Fifth Avenue, he is a dignified visitor, a man who does his business in back rooms but surrounded by Aubusson tapestries and gilt. Perhaps a few hours before, he took a lunch of kangaroo-tail soup at Fortnum and Mason, on Madison Avenue nearby, so that he would be fortified in schmoozing with some of the sixteen or so thousand names in New York’s social register this evening (see Worden 304–5; 307). Tobin’s telling feature, however, the quality that strikes a viewer instantaneously and always decorates him, more than his power, is his polished charm, his glow. He is the shining future the workers at the aircraft plant think could be theirs someday, if only they struggle forthrightly and keep their noses clean. More importantly, he is the sort of knight who might very easily, and very swiftly, mobilize the loyalty and adherence of losers such as Fry and Neilson, and even of a more arrogant loser such as Freeman, boasting of his son’s golden hair and admitting, with some slight equivocation, that he had hair like that himself as a little boy.

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