Sabotage : Classic Example Of Suspence

Sabotage was released in 1936. The film was directed by Alfried Hitchcock, the 'master of suspence', and starred Sylvia Sidney, Oskar Homolka and Desmond Tester.

Plot

Karl Verloc (Oscar Homolka), the owner of a cinema, is part of a gang of saboteurs who are planning a series of attacks in London. Scotland Yard suspects Verloc's involvement in the plot and assigns Detective Sergeant Ted Spencer (John Loder) to investigate Verloc, initially under cover. Spencer conducts the investigation posing as a greengrocer's helper, selling fruit and vegetables in a shop right next to the cinema.
Verloc's young and beautiful wife (Sylvia Sidney) believes that her husband is a good man because he has been kind to her and her little brother, Stevie (Desmond Tester), who lives with them. However, gradually she comes to suspect that her husband may not be as good of a man as she thinks he is. Verloc gives Stevie a task to delivery some film canisters to the cinema. Stevie had thought that he was simply delivering a film canister, but he was unknowingly carrying a time bomb for Verloc, to be detonated in the London Underground station under Piccadilly Circus. Stevie however had become distracted along the way, which had delayed his delivery, and thus the bomb exploded en route to its final target, killing him and many passengers on the bus he was on.
Verloc confesses to his wife, but then blames Scotland Yard and Spencer for Stevie's death, saying that they were the ones who prevented Verloc from successfully carrying out the bomb delivery himself. Soon afterwards, as Verloc and his wife are preparing to eat dinner, she stabs him to death with a knife. When Spencer arrives to arrest Verloc he realizes what has happened, but is adamant that she shouldn't admit that she killed her husband. Despite this, she starts to confess her crime to a policeman. Then an explosion and fire at the cinema intervene, destroying all the evidence of her crime and effectively preventing the policeman from remembering whether it was before or after the explosion that she told him, "My husband is dead!"
At the end we see Mrs Verloc and Ted Spencer walk away together.

The Lord Mayor Show Sequence





'...master of suspense.'


Hitchcock creates vast amounts of suspense in this film in a variety of ways. One of which is by letting us , the audience know when the bomb is going to explode. This becomes a useful tool as thoughtout the sequence ( Lord Mayor Show ), Hitchcock constantly includes shots of clocks, letting us know the bomb is drawing closer and closer to its destination, but yet the characters have no idea . This builds suspense as we are constantly waiting for the bomb to explode, knowing it is going to explode, and not being able to do nothing about it. The fact we see the bomb and Hitchcock constantly uses close ups of the bomb also adds to the suspense.

The music used in this sequence also is cleverly used to create suspense as the sounds are very similar to the sound of a ticking clock, thus linking back to the destination time, the close up of the clocks. As the speed of the music increases, the time also does. When looking at the images accompanying this music, we can clearly say this is a use of contrapuntal music which adds to the suspense and tension as we get the impressions things are not all as appear, something disastrous IS about to occur. This is in connection to the tempo of the music as it increases as the time gets closer and closer to 1:45 PM.