subscribe to this pageIn the same issue of The New York Times as the Macgowan letter in defense of Lifeboat, Bosley Crowther responds with a strong critique of Macgowan and the film.
Crowther's article is a strong reflection of the American view of films during the height of censorship. His article is not one of strongly synthesized arguments about why Lifeboat is bad for the war effort. Instead he frequently employs the use of rhetorical questions, asking questions like "What's going on out there[Hollywood]?" as if any film whose portrayal of America's strength is questionable is an outrage in itself and needs no further explanation.
One of Crowther's criticisms that does not feature a question mark is that of all the abilities given to the German. He is the only one with the mental, physical, and emotional ability to amputize Gus's leg, navigate the ship through the storm, and row it towards its destination. He credits all of his abilities as being well-explained, but critizes Hitchcock (and unfairly Steinbeck) for giving them to him in the first place. His argument can be summarized as no matter how well you explain Superman's ability to fly, his super strength, or his heat vision, they still make him look like Superman.
He closes his critique claiming that anything that casts doubt on America is inherently bad to morale and for our image overseas, giving credence to the idea of film as Will Hays's silient salesman. Censorship in the 1940s is often attributed only to organizations like the PCA and OWI. However, the critical reaction to Lifeboat shows that if they weren't strictly enforcing unquestionable pro-American ideals in film that their would be outcry from other outlets.
By 1941, Hitchcock was considered by pop culture to be in the same league as Frank Capra and Orson Welles as being a recognizable personality as well as filmmaker. Hitchcock had begun to receive some autonomy on his films of this periods from studios like RKO (who also afforded the same courtesy to Welles). However, while Welles’s autonomy came contractually, Hitchcock’s came from people’s dislike of confrontation with the standoffish director. With RKO unsatisfied with the progress of one of his projects, they began to seek more direct involvement. Hitchock responded by leaving the studio after the projects completion, with David O. Selznick helping him work out a deal with 20th Century Fox.
Unused to and unaccepting of studio interference, Hitchcock’s brief stint at 20th Century Fox saw Hitchcock having to deal with studio head Zanuck over many of the elements of production. Zanuck’s biggest issue with Hitchcock was his slow production pace. It took twenty weeks for a script for Lifeboat to be produced. A short production schedule was imposed on Hitchcock which was ignored. Zanuck constantly sent letters complaining of the inefficiency of Hitchcock’s shooting scenes in sequential order and wanted cuts to be made to keep the project under budget, with Hitchcock frequently never responding. Hitchcock disliked the even stronger studio interference then in his earlier projects, and Zanuck disliked Hitchcock’s disregard for the budget. With Hitchcock’s value to the studio questionable, a second film for Fox was not produced (as originally intended).
Leff also notes that although Hitchcock sought after Steinbeck, he still hesitated working with The Grapes of Wrath author. Familiar with Steinbeck’s work, Hitchcock was afraid of the “political baggage” that would be brought to the film that was meant to be a technical challenge above all. Ironically, Steinbeck’s original work was far less politically controversial then Hitchcock’s eventual film. Even in interviews after filming, Hitchcock denies any reading of the film other then a political one. Leff states this as being the film’s chief weakness. Instead of focusing on the development of real characters, Hitchcock is more concerned with the allegory of political ideal and ideals colliding.
After critical reaction to the flim Lifeboat complained of the weak portrayal of Americans in comparison with the superman Nazi, producer Kenneth Macgowan wrote this article about the intent behind the film. Macgowan tries and provide explanations for several of the issues that critics had with the film. He claims the reason the German is the only one who can row the boat because he's the only one with water and food tablets, avoiding the fact that no one man should be able to paddle that lifeboat, no matter how strong he is.
Interestingly, in the article Macgowan includes Steinbeck's name in the list of primary creators of the allegory that was being so strongly criticized because at the time, Steinbeck was seeking to have his name removed from the film.
Macgowan credits Hitchcock with the idea of shooting a film in a lifeboat, and saying that first and foremost, this was a gimmick film. It was Hitchcock's idea of a challenge to shoot the first ever film with only one set. For this reason, Macgowan claims that the allegory was never intended, and they stumbled upon it by accident, throughout the creative process. Steinbeck is the only one for whom this is definetly true as his early manuscript proves. However, a few paragraphs earlier, Macgowan was crediting Steinbeck, a man only involved only very early on in the process, with having an allegorical intent that was supposedly developed later on.
Macgowan's contradictions are best summed up in his final paragraph when he essentially says (paraphrasing), "You misinterpreted our intent. Oh, and if you still disagree, we didn't have any intent to begin with."