You want a contained thriller? Here’s World War 2 fought on a lifeboat. Sure, you can have your guys trapped in a box or trapped in a phone booth talking to a sniper or trapped in the trunk or a car or trapped in some other, maybe smaller, location - but do those stories *work*? Are they exciting? Are they visually interesting? Sure - I can read a screenplay about a guy trapped in a phone booth and it might work on the page - but can it work on the screen? That’s all that really matters - someone might write some script that reads well, but will the *movie* work? If not, it’s crap... and LIFEBOAT ain’t crap. It’s another brilliant Hitchcock experiment... that works.
Imagine doing an entire disaster movie... on a lifeboat. This is the ultimate contained thriller because the scope of the story is huge - World War 2 - and even though the story has a limited cast and a *very* limited location, the story is filled with twists and tough decisions and big dramatic scenes and distinctive characters who form alliances and then break them and form different alliances - changing sides again and again like a whole season of SURVIVOR... and all of this excitement in a contained thriller. Which makes it a great example of how to get the most from the least.
Nutshell: After a German sub sinks their ship during World War 2, a diverse group of people must share a lifeboat adrift in the ocean... with a member of the German submarine crew (which was also sunk). With rations at a minimum (and water running out) they must come up with a plan to rescue themselves... with the help of that German submarine crew member who knows about navigation. Should they trust him?
The survivors are:
Connie (Tallulah Bankhead) - a wealthy writer who is defined by her possessions: her prized typewriter, the diamond bracelet her first husband gave her, her camera, her expensive mink coat, her cigarette case... all of these things she will lose one-by-one while trapped on the lifeboat. A complete diva who only thinks of herself... married a dozen times, currently single. An independent woman.
Kovak (John Hodiak) - a rugged member of the ship’s engine crew, covered with grease and oil and tattoos, he’s the voice of the working man... and so loud he’s close to being a commie. Kovak has no love for the wealthy. Those tattoos? All of the women he’s loved and left behind.
Ritt (Henry Hull) - actually C.J. Rittenhouse, one of the wealthiest men in the world. A completely self-made man, but not snobbish. He had six boxes of Cuban cigars in his cabin, grabbed one when they abandoned ship, and ended up with a box with only one cigar - which is clenched between his teeth for the whole movie. He starts out trying to take control of the lifeboat, but eventually becomes the most docile survivor.
Gus (William Bendix) - wounded sailor, where Kovak is the intelligent working class man, Gus is the uneducated working class man. Prejudiced, paranoid, proud. Worried that his injured leg will keep him off the dance floor... and cause his dance-crazy girl Rosie to hook up with his arm enemy Al the Armenian. His last name isn’t Smith, it’s really Schmidt - he’s of German ancestry - and now rejects his roots.
Sparks (Hume Cronyn) - ship’s radio officer, a quiet man who does his job without question... and half of the romance subplot of the film. When the battles for control of the boat rage, Sparks is on the sideline waiting for it to sort out so that he can go back to work... completely apolitical... until he has no choice.
Miss McKenzie (Mary Anderson) - a nurse onboard the ship on her way to England to follow her married lover, a doctor. She becomes the other half of the romance subplot... and the one who cares for Gus and anyone else sick on the boat. Like Sparks, she has a job to do and doesn’t get involved in the politics... until she has no choice. Then she becomes fierce.
Joe (Canada Lee) - ship’s steward, called “Charcoal” by Connie and “George” by Ritt (George being the generic name for African American servants at the time). Though he had a criminal past, religion turned him around - now he’s a family man who believes God will help solve their problems.
Mrs. Higley (Heather Angel) - new mother with child... rescued by Joe. But when Joe brings Mrs. Higley and her baby onboard, Miss McKenzie checks the baby and it is dead. She is in shock, and no one wants to take the dead baby away from her. When she realizes her baby is dead, she completely gives up on life and keeps trying to kill herself.
Willy (Walter Slezak) - the final survivor brought about the lifeboat is a member of the German submarine crew... who claims to just be a sailor and claims to speak no English and claims to know the correct direction to the British Navy Base at Bermuda. He is smart and resourceful and calm and organized... he has the plan that no one else knows about. He is really the commander of the submarine, has energy tablets and a compass, steals their water, and his course to Bermuda is actually leading them to a German supply ship where they will be captured and sent to concentration camps. He is sure of himself, and does everything he can to keep the others fighting amongst themselves.
What you may have noticed about these nine survivors is that they are not only characters, they are archetypes - symbols - and this allows the script to play out World War 2 with eight characters and one set. One of the great things this script does is use symbols - both the characters in the story and the objects - to make a larger point and sum up complicated pieces of story and information. We’re going to look at those symbols and the series of tough decisions the survivors must make until they are rescued.
Experiment: Hey, it’s 9 people on one lifeboat for 97 minutes! Talk about contained thrillers!
Hitch Appearance: So how the hell does the director do his cameo when it’s 9 people on one lifeboat for 97 minutes? In a newspaper advertizement! Hitch shows up in an ad for “Reduco” on the back page of a newspaper - a fat Hitch and a skinny Hitch. The power of fake newspapers: many folks in the audience thought there was a real product called Reduco and that Hitch had actually lost all of that weight.
Great Scenes: We’re going to look at the use of symbols to compress complicated information and create a visual and action-based method to deal with ideas, how to create a great ending, and also look at how to make a contained thriller exciting and well-paced by creating a series of tough decisions and reversals in a section called...
Dog Juice: Over on my Script Secrets website there’s a tip in rotation about “Dog Juice” - it’s my theory that all dogs, regardless of size, have the exact same amount of energy. So a little Chihuahua has the same amount of energy as a huge St. Bernard... which is why those little dogs have too much energy and those huge dogs end up kind of lazy. Movies are exactly the same - every movie needs to have the same amount of “entertainment energy” - that huge CGI filled all-star blockbuster needs to be just as entertaining as that small film. The big problem with a contained thriller is that we lose the “energy” of going to all kinds of cool locations, and even the “energy” of just cutting away from this location. We’re trapped here! And being at the same location can become boring after a while... and after 97 minutes? People are thinking about what they might want to eat after the movie instead of what’s on screen.
The more you take away, the more you must add - so that the energy level is always equal. A contained thriller takes away a bunch of things, which means we must add energy and excitement to keep it in balance. Usually we end up adding plot twists and increase the pacing of the story. More events, more tough decisions, more big problems that must be solved now. As I probably said in that Script Tip, if you have a big movie star, people will watch them walk down a street because they are a movie star. When you take some no name actor and have them walk down the same street, the audience wants to know why you are wasting their time with this scene. Same scene - but a movie star is “juice”, and that no name actor is not. If you have a conversation between two characters at an amazing location, the location brings some “juice” (energy / entertainment value) to the scene. Same scene in a normal location is less entertaining. When we have only one location for the whole movie, we lose all kinds of energy / entertainment and something has to make up for it.
One of the built in good things with LIFEBOAT is that it takes place in the ocean, so at least the images behind the talking actors are interesting - we get sunsets and storms and that big beautiful ocean. Oh, and those storms add all kinds of excitement - and the ocean seems to be constantly at war with the lifeboat. That’s one of the basics of a survival story - it has a man-against-nature component and that means nature will be trying its damnedest to destroy the humans in its path. They are usually *not* on a calm, placid sea... they are usually in the middle of crashing waves threatening to sink the ship and crazy winds and currents pushing them in the wrong direction. In a man-against-nature movie, nature is out to get us! LIFEBOAT milks this... and if you look at many other contained thrillers like KEY LARGO and MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS and MISERY, nature often plays a part in a story that is stuck in one location. This is a great way to add excitement to a story that can’t go anywhere. Man against nature is one of the major conflicts in a survival movie, and there are lots of scenes in LIFEBOAT where Mother Nature attacks.
The film also has a bunch of big dramatic decisions that keep the pace moving.
A) When they pull Willy onboard the lifeboat and discover he’s a German, should they throw him overboard because he’s the enemy, or do the humane and human thing that shows they are more civilized than they are?
B) Who should be in charge? This is a decision that gets debated throughout the story and flares up into arguments frequently. At first Ritt takes charge, because he’s rich and owns shipyards, so he’s qualified, right? Except he doesn’t know anything about navigation or sailing... and Kovak, who *does* know how to get the lifeboat moving takes over... but Kovak doesn’t know where they are or what direction they should be sailing.
C) Willy knows the direction to Bermuda... do they trust him? He says he wants to get to safety as much as the rest of them. Oh - he only speaks German, and Connie has to translate for him...
D) Do they trust Connie? What if she and the German are in Cahoots somehow? Connie seems to *champion* the German. When Sparks says he thinks he knows which way to Bermuda, and Willy disagrees, Connie sides with Willy.
E) When they discover that Mrs. Higley’s baby is dead, do they pry it from her arms and throw it overboard or let her hang onto it?
F) And after burying the baby at sea, when Mrs. Higley wakes up and asks where her baby went, what do they tell her and who tells her?
G) Now what do they do with a suicidal Mrs. Higley? Food and water are in short supply... is letting her kill herself a good idea? They end up tying her to the mast...
H) In the middle of the night, on Ritt’s watch, Mrs. Higley jumps over the side of the boat. Do they punish Ritt? Do they divvy up her food?
I) Gus’ leg is getting worse - amputate it?
J) Okay, who cuts it off? Willy? He claims he was a surgeon before the war. Of course, a surgeon never had to operate with a hunting knife in a storm on a rocking boat with only some brandy as an anesthetic.
K) Connie tricks Willy into answering to “Captain” - so he was the captain of the submarine that shelled their ship and killed all of the other passengers and then gave the orders to sink the lifeboats! Okay, do they trust him now?
L) While Willy sleeps, they debate whether Willy’s pocket watch might actually be a compass... and talk reformed pickpocket Joe into stealing it. It *is* a compass! Now what do they do about Willy? He’s probably been guiding them to a German supply ship instead of Bermuda.
M) When a huge storm hits, Willy takes control of the lifeboat, barking orders *in English*, which end up saving all of their lives. He is now commander of the lifeboat. Do they allow this? Do they fight him or do what he says?
N) During that storm, all of their food and water washes out of the lifeboat. They now have no provisions, Willy is captain of the ship, and each blames the other for allowing the food and water to wash away. A huge conflict - and they are all screwed.
Those are some of the highlights of about the first half of the movie... I have *40* decisions and conflicts jotted down in my notes - and let me tell you that things get worse in the last half of the film, and people have to fight harder to survive. And those are the big dramatic decisions, not the small ones - like, when they put it to a vote who should captain the ship, Joe wants to know if he has a vote, too - and we get a discussion of racism and racial equality. And these 40 plus conflicts & decisions are not all of the scenes in the film, there are all kinds of scenes between our lovebirds and between Connie and Kovac, and between Kovak and Ritt (Kovak makes cards from Connie’s notebook and plays poker with Ritt... and keeps winning - luck, skill, or marked cards?) and between Gus and everyone about his dancing future and lose of Rosie. These 40 plus scenes are the “set piece” scenes - and there are many more of them because this is a contained thriller.
Because we can not cut away to some other location, and we aren’t introducing any new characters, the pacing *must* be faster and the scenes more intense. People don’t just talk, they get limbs chopped off in a storm! A contained thriller or contained any kind of script needs just as much excitement and “energy” and “juice” as a screenplay that jets qaround te world and has all kinds of big set piece scenes. Even though it is set on a lifeboat and never gets off of it, LIFEBOAT needs to be just as exciting as NORTH BY NORTHWEST. So we need *more* conflict scenes, *more* big dramatic decisions, *more* twists like Willy speaking English, and more *personal* conflict than in a standard film.
More *personal* conflict: in NORTH BY NORTHWEST we have that great cornfield chase and attack scene, which is big spectacular action-suspense scene. Because we can’t go *big* in a contained thriller, we have to go *deeper* and *more personal*. So in LIFEBOAT we have people get their legs amputated, their babies die, they lose hope and kill themselves - the same amount of “juice” as that cornfield chase. Things are more permanent, more dangerous, and scar people for life. In NORTH BY NORTHWEST, sure Roger is a changed man by the end of the film and almost lost his life a few times... but by the end of LIFEBOAT characters are dead or have limbs removed (they will never dance again) or have killed somebody over stealing water - because we can’t go big, we have to go deep.
Symbolism: Of course, all of the characters in this story are symbolic. Each is some facet of America before we entered World war 2, and the film is really a discussion of whether we should become involved in the war. Though it’s easy to look back and think that fighting Hitler was a no brainer, at the time the public was not interested in fighting another war while we were still digging ourselves out of the depression, and there was even a large popular group in the United States that was on *Hitler’s side*! So this whole film is symbolic - the lifeboat is the United States!
One of the major issue with a screenplay that is a handful of people trapped in a single location is that they tend to get talky, and film is a visual medium. Hitchcock said,"Rely on action to tell your story and resort to dialogue only when it's impossible to do otherwise." Screenplays are stories told in pictures. Modern motion pictures consist of two parts: the picture and the sound. As writers, we are responsible for both... So we need to find a way to use the images to tell the story, and LIFEBOAT uses symbols to create strong visuals. Here are some from the film...
1) Connie’s “trappings” are all symbols. She has a camera that has filmed the ship sinking and the German sub shelling and sinking the lifeboats. She is an *observer* - not involved - and the camera is part of that... Kovak knocks it into the ocean.
2) Connie’s typewriter is the next to go - she is typing up the news story of the ship sinking and it goes overboard... the last thing that makes her a *reporter* of the ship wreck. She is no longer detached and uninvolved - this tragedy is *her* tragedy.
3) Mrs. Higley is wet and freezing, so Connie must give up her mink coat... in a thriller the protagonist is often stripped of everything that identifies them and must be reborn as someone else in order to survive. Connie is the lead in LIFEBOAT and goes through this transformation. The mink coat is her place in society... and she loses it and becomes just one of the survivors on the boat.
4) Mrs. Higley becomes suicidal after she realizes her baby is dead, and they have to tie her to the mast. One morning they wake up and she’s gone. The rope tied to the mast going over the side of the boat into the water. It’s taut - her body dragging underwater behind the boat. Now they must cut the rope - and the act of cutting the rope, leaving the dead behind, it a big moment.
5) When they amputate Gus’ leg, his empty boot is tosses onto the deck of the boat. That is one powerful visual. And that empty boot doesn’t disappear from the deck, it comes into play again and again in the story.
6) The tattoos on Kovak’s chest - he wears his broken hearts for all to see. “Love Letters” is what Connie calls them. Kovak is so practical in the story that this romantic element helps to balance his character and also comes into play as the story goes on. He is a romantic who has been burned, and hardened his heart. There is something underneath his cynicism.
7) Connie’s bracelet is her romantic symbol. Given to her by a past husband, the only one she really loved. She has more valuable jewelry (money) but nothing as valuable (emotions). You can strip her of everything else that defines her, but not that bracelet.
8) Willy’s compass - if you have that compass, you control the boat. You control your destiny.
9) One of the greatest bit of symbolism is Ritt, one of the richest men in the world, playing Joe’s flute for Willy. Serenading Willy with German songs as Willy rows the boat towards the German supply ship that will turn them from survivors into prisoners of war. This is another powerful visual bit that continues through the last half of the film.
10) Sweat and tears. Because they are dehydrated, they can not sweat or cry. But at one point in the story a character does sweat... and that means that character was stealing water from the other survivors. It’s a HUGE moment when we see that sweat. A much better moment than if someone had said: “You stole water!” - we can see the sweat.
11) There’s an action scene near the end where Willy is beaten... with Gus’ boot.
There are some other symbols in the film, from Ritt’s lone cigar to a cigarette lighter to the playing cards to a newspaper that comes between Connie and Kovak. Similar to the “dog juice” of excitement when we are dealing with a contained thriller, we also have a form of “dog juice” when it comes to using the picture part of the film. We still need to have interesting images up there on screen, and use those images to help tell the story. LIFEBOAT makes the most of the props in that boat, turning many of them into powerful symbols.
SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS!
Endings: Contained Thrillers often crap out at the end (PHONE BOOTH, anyone... side note - PHONE BOOTH was originally pitched to Hitchcock! Some scripts take a while to hit the screen), but LIFEBOAT manages to have a great ending. Because our story has been so contained - 100% of it takes place in the lifeboat - we need an ending that the explodes out of the screen. The cool thing about LIFEBOAT is that it is a whole disaster movie on one set! So we need a big disaster movie ending, and LIFEBOAT delivers.
Twist-twist-twist! So, once they get rid of Willy, they are screwed. He was not only the only natural leader, he was steering them to the German supply ship and away from Bermuda. They will now die adrift at sea. Then Connie has an idea - her cheap bracelet, the one given to her by the only man she ever loved, would make a good lure for fishing. They rig it to the fishing line, put it in the water... and suspense builds as they try to catch a fish - this is a real suspense scene with a large fish attracted to the lure but not quite taking the bait... then it bites!
As they reel in the fish... Someone spots a ship on the horizon! They are saved! The fishing line is dropped and zips over the edge of the boat - taking Connie’s bracelet with it. As the ship gets closer, they can see the flag - the German supply ship. They will be captured and become prisoners of war.
But here’s the thing - a German supply ship will have *supplies* - food and water. They will get to eat a real meal and drink real coffee... before they are locked up in the brig. At this point, that sounds damned good to all of them. As the supply boat launches its dingy to pick them up, they begin to fantasize about the food they will soon eat.
Then the dingy stops, turns around, and heads back to the supply ship! Leaving them to die in the open sea! From fantasies about food, they now have to deal with dying adrift in this lifeboat. The German supply ship is abandoning them. How can they do that? Why would they do that?
Then, thunder and lightning on the horizon. The German supply ship is leaving them to die in a *storm*.
But it’s *not* thunder and lightning, it’s cannon fire! An American warship! Firing right at them! They are too close to the German supply ship and will be sunk by their own ship! They row away as quickly as they can! Shells raining all around them!
One shells hits the German supply ship, sinking it. A nice big ending to the story, and the American ship is on its way to rescue them. That’s a lot of excitement and a lot of reversals crammed into the few minutes of the ending.
All My Life’s A Circle: The film ends as it begins. The cool thing about the ending is that it is the same as the beginning - the film opens with a ship being shelled and sinking and the folks on the lifeboat and pulling in Willy... and it ends with the German supply ship being shelled and sinking and the folks on the lifeboat and a man climbing up the side of the lifeboat so they haul him in and he says “Danke schoen” just like Willy did... and they all throw him back into the water. A great ending!
Sound Track: Mostly without music... except the flute played by one of the characters.
LIFEBOAT is another Hitchcock experimental film that works - even decades after World War 2. You can’t get any more contained than 9 people on 1 lifeboat - and that this is a *disaster movie*! The characters are well defined and the conflict continues to escalate and all of the performances are really good. I would be remiss if I did not mention that great behind the scenes story about Tallulah Bankhead, who has some aversion to underwear and ruined some takes by flashing the camera and ruined others by flashing fellow actors. Of course, none of this is in the film - that would have it rated NC-17. For a movie with one location, it never gets boring - if anything, the opposite. In one scene, a character notes that they are dying one-by-one while Willy gets stronger - though that might have been symbolic of the United States in the early years of World War 2 when the film was made, today it seems like a disaster movie combined with an AND THEN THERE WERE NONE style serial killer movie. Who will survive?
- Bill
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