(Alfred Hitchcock, UK 1936, 76 min., 35mm)
Part of an extraordinary string of thrillers in Hitchcock’s British period, Sabotage is primarily known now for a sequence including a bomb, a bus, a child, and an inexorable ratcheting of tension. Based on Joseph Conrad’s novel Secret Agent, the film puts an undercover man (John Loder) in a greengrocer’s next to a cinema whose owner (Oskar Homolka) is suspected of being part of a terrorist organization. Hitchcock, however, is more interested in the wife (Sylvia Sidney) of the suspect, what she knows, how she feels, and how that will change as truths are revealed. Using typically Hitchcockian techniques of camera placement and editing, this early film displays the beginnings of what would earn Hitch the nickname “The Master of Suspense.”