Alfred Hitchcock Collectors Guide: Lifeboat (1944), Part 3

by Brent Reid

Home video

  • This missing boat must be hunted down as it isn’t in any collections
  • In the same boat: Almost all early DVDs have compromised audio
  • Hitch’s original soundtrack can only be found on certain releases
  • Many relevant extras are spread across different discs worldwide
  • A new feature-length documentary spotlights film’s controversies

Note: this is part of an ongoing series of 150-odd Hitchcock articles; any dead links are to those not yet published. Subscribe to the email list to be notified when new ones appear.

Lifeboat: Writing on a Classic; Collectors Guide, Pt 2: Shorts and controversies, Pt 3: Home video, Pt 4: Soundtrack and remakes

Walter Slezak in Lifeboat aka Das Rettungsboot (1944, dir. Alfred Hitchcock) German Concorde Blu-ray

German Concorde Blu-ray: a close #2 for image and audio


Contents


Home video

As previously stated, Lifeboat is an only child in that it has, along with Under Capricorn albeit to a lesser degree, suffered somewhat from being one of only a few American Hitchcocks whose rights are split between different territories or owned by companies who have no other of the Master’s movies. This means they are the least often anthologised, whether in home video box sets or TV and cinema packages. At least Lifeboat, unlike Capricorn, appears to have escaped the vicissitudes of regional censorship and very poor quality releases, so its critical standing is much higher today.

Although it had been around on US VHS and LD (sleeve notes) since the 1980s, Lifeboat was a little late to the party on DVD compared to other American Hitchcocks. But the upside is that their shared master looks great; for once there are no substandard early home video era transfers still floating around as is often the case, especially with Hitch’s US films. The original negative has long since sailed off into the sunset and the de facto source is a preserved composite print, pieced together from the best surviving elements. While it hasn’t undergone anything like a full digital restoration, even for its move to HD, revealing fine scratches and other damage marks throughout but especially during the first reel, on the whole it’s clear and pleasingly detailed with appropriate levels of grain.

Unfortunately, things aren’t quite so simple when it comes to the available audio tracks as there are two stark choices: very good and… oh dear. On the upside, a generous selection of English-language extras have been produced and spread out among the many different releases, and all are itemised below.

Now Showing: worldwide screenings


Remixed audio

Walter Slezak in Lifeboat (1944, dir. Alfred Hitchcock) 20th Century Fox non-US DVD artwork

A Willi your mother would warn you about: menacing Walter Slezak on 20th Century Fox worldwide (non-US) DVD artwork; avoid the altered discs it adorns.

First the bad news: following an increasingly prevalent but boneheaded trend, 20th Century Fox opted to remix Lifeboat’s robust and faultless original mono soundtrack into 2.0 stereo for its initial DVD release. Although adequate for the many undiscerning reviewers who rated it favourably, the alterations involved replacing some original effects, adding others where none previously existed, and altering the balance and dynamics overall.

  • Holland: Fox 2-DVD and DVD/alt (2007)
  • Poland: Fox DVD/alt (2010)
  • Australia: Fox 2-DVD (2006) review
  • Brazil: Fox 2-DVD (2006), disc 1 also in 3-DVD Grandes Clássicos
Lifeboat (1944, dir. Alfred Hitchcock) cartoon by Otis Frampton, 2009

Cartoon by Otis Frampton, 2009

The original track was recorded and mixed by Bernard Freericks and Oscar winning, five-time nominee Roger Heman Sr. They racked up around 140 and 370 film and TV credits respectively, with their careers spanning the very dawn of the sound era until the end of the 1960s. Their tally includes many of the greatest American classics ever made; Hitch’s credentials and notoriously fastidious attention to his films’ sound designs need no explanation. Therefore, it’s safe to say all three men knew their craft better than almost anyone, then or now, and didn’t need to be second-guessed by any latter-day, gimmick-chasing studio bean-counters or ham-fisted, Johnny-come-lately knob-twiddlers with no respect nor regard for their creative superiors.

Sadly, within Hitch’s canon, Lifeboat isn’t alone in its plight; the same fate has also befallen the soundtracks for Murder!Rich and StrangeSuspicion, RopeTo Catch a Thief, VertigoNorth by NorthwestPsycho and several others. Such revisionism is both unwelcome and unnecessary but I’m actually fine with it if the original is presented alongside, so more discerning folk are free to choose. But suppressing it wholesale, as happens in most cases but never with colorization, that other major form of alteration, is very far from cool.

John Hodiak and Tallulah Bankhead in Lifeboat (1944, dir. Alfred Hitchcock) US lobby card

John Hodiak and Tallulah Bankhead feature on this colorized US lobby card (orig)

Amongst the initial worldwide round of Fox DVDs, only the US disc includes the original audio; everywhere else just gets the remix commissioned from Chace Audio (vid), as happened with many Fox catalogue films. Though note, as is often the case and especially with all releases of the altered Hitchcocks above, the US DVD defaults to the ersatz version. Thankfully though, the remix has since been dropped and all post-2010, non-Fox releases (including streaming versions, unlike the above films) feature the original audio – exactly as it was meant to be heard.

Lifeboat was released quite soon after the end of the war in most occupied countries and dubbed into Spanish (1947), and Italian (1948); these are included on their respective DVDs in mono. For some reason though, the film wasn’t dubbed for its belated 1956 French release – presumably theatrical prints had burned-in subtitles – and still hasn’t been to this day.

For obvious reasons, the film wasn’t widely seen in Germany until its 1974 West German TV première or, rather, zuerst; it was subtitled on that occasion as with all subsequent screenings over the next three decades. All domestic releases have an optional 2005 dub (alt) which was prepared for the initial DVD, on which it appears in 2.0 stereo. Again, it’s correctly mono on the more recent Concorde discs, though I haven’t checked whether it’s overlaid on the original track or a fold-down of the remix; anyone care to enlighten us?


Original audio

Lifeboat (1944, dir. Alfred Hitchcock) 20th Century Fox US DVD

20th Century Fox US DVD with optional mono audio (rear)

These are the Lifeboat releases to go for. All may feature the same preserved transfer but strangely the US Kino and German Concorde discs have significantly more information on the sides than all the others. The film’s theatrical aspect ratio is 1.37:1 and most releases, as is usually the case with home video, crop it almost negligibly to 1.33:1, the native AR of tube TVs and DVD. But the US and German discs actually add a little, making them around 1.39:1. There is some variance in overall brightness of the transfer on different releases too: the US is darkest, the German slightly less so and the UK/Oz lighter still. I think the US disc gets it just right and is my go-to for the film itself.

However, the identical UK Eureka and Oz Shock discs are also essential for their exclusive inclusion of Hitch’s remastered wartime shorts – in HD on the BDs – and the former’s chunky, 36-page booklet. An 8-sided fold-out leaflet is also included with the Fox 2-DVD sets. Note that though differently packaged the four Scandinavian DVDs are all identical.

  • Sweden: Studio S DVD/alt (2012) info
  • Denmark: Another World DVD/alt (2013)
  • Finland: Future Film DVD/alt (2012)
  • Norway: Another World DVD (2013)
Lifeboat (1944, dir. Alfred Hitchcock) US Kino Lorber Blu-ray

US Kino Blu-ray: #1 for image and audio; the artwork is a slightly cropped US one sheet poster whose background detail was also used for the UK Eureka releases.

Though far fewer than the literally countless bootlegs of Hitch’s British films, there are still many treacherous rip-offs floating around. Be wary of discs from places as far-flung as Brazil (Classicline/BD-R/DVDContinental), Chile (Cinematekka/set), China (Bo ying), Italy (A&R Productions, DNA – cropped to “widescreen“! Studio 4K BD-R) and Korea (Sky Cinemaunknown, Cleo Ent). Last and definitely least, a particularly bad Spanish BD-R (New Line) features a downloaded PAL DVD rip, with its original 1.33:1 aspect ratio horizontally stretched to fill the disc’s 1.78:1 native AR. Urgh.


Extras

Here’s a breakdown of all the extras appearing on releases worldwide. Note that as Fox’s 2-DVD sets only have the 2005 commentary on disc one with the rest on the second, they’re obviously MIA on single-disc editions. What’s most surprising is the original theatrical trailer, surely a prerequisite for extras, has only appeared on two DVDs to date.

  • Audio commentary by film historian Drew Casper (2005) – all Fox DVDs and US Kino BD
  • Audio commentary by film historian Tim Lucas (2017) – US Kino BD only
  • Bon Voyage and Aventure Malgache – UK Eureka and Oz Shock discs
  • “A Talk with Hitchcock” (1964, 25:06/24:27) – all non-US Fox DVDs and German Concorde discs
  • “AH’s Lifeboat: The Theater of War” featurette (2005, 20:00) – all discs
  • Hitchcock/Truffaut audio interview (11:59) – US Kino, UK Eureka and Oz Shock discs; plays over photo gallery
  • Theatrical trailer (2:11) – German and Italian Fox DVDs
  • 2017 trailer (1:27) – US Kino BD
  • Various photo galleries – all discs
  • 36-page booklet – UK Eureka only
  • 8-sided fold-out leaflet – Fox 2-DVD only

Apart from the wartime shorts, the main extras missing from both US and the latest UK/Oz releases are two TV interview episodes, jointly titled “A Talk with Hitchcock“, but they’ve also been issued on a separate US region 0 DVD.

With a title as provocative as Hitchcock’s Pro-Nazi Film? (2023), it’s a foregone conclusion this French-made but English-friendly documentary can’t sustain its thin premise. As you’d expect, around two thirds of its 87-minute running time is padded out with much contextualising of Hitch’s career and wartime politics before rightfully concluding Lifeboat is actually an anti-Nazi film. But actor-writer-director Daphné Baiwir, with similar feature-length outings on Olivia de Havilland and Stephen King’s copious screen adaptations under her belt, has at least succeeded in giving some considered and much-overdue love to one of Hitch’s most neglected offspring. Effectively Lifeboat’s most significant ‘extra’ to date, this doc has only been released on one US DVD but is widely available on streaming platforms everywhere.


Screenshots

There are plenty of other comparative screenshots at the invaluable Caps-a-holic and Hitchcock Zone.

  • Duo #2: US DVD | UK, US BD
  • Sextet: US DVD | UK, US BD
  • Bankhead: US DVD | UK, US BD
Lifeboat (1944, dir. Alfred Hitchcock) UK Eureka/Masters of Cinema Blu-ray screenshot

UK/Oz BD screenshot, with Canada Lee edged out of the frame – again (publicity still)

Lifeboat: Writing on a Classic; Collectors Guide, Pt 2: Shorts and controversies, Pt 3: Home video, Pt 4: Soundtrack and remakes


This is part of a unique, in-depth series of 150-odd Hitchcock articles.

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