Classic claustrophobia

"Lifeboat," Alfred Hitchcock's 1944 exercise in claustrophobia and heated personal interactions, concerns itself with three women and six men adrift on a lifeboat in the North Atlantic after a Nazi torpedo sinks their cruise ship. The contents of the boat are conveniently diverse, with an African-American steward, a passive radio operator, an outspoken Communist, an elitist writer/photographer and even the captain of the U-boat that doomed them all to begin with sharing close quarters and an equal desire for survival.\nManipulating the marionette strings like only he could do, Hitchcock reins in brilliant performances from all his actors, including golden-age diva Tallulah Bankhead, the always affable Hume Cronyn and Heather Angel as a woman grasping her dead baby while slowly going insane, inspiring both sympathy and ire towards the floating castaways as the confined space heightens the drama and tension.\nHitchcock typically harbored ulterior motives behind making his films, and "Lifeboat" functions not only as a gripping survival tale but also as an effective anti-war diatribe. Being a Londoner, and surely weary of his country being mired in conflict for four years running, flashes of dialogue and entire strains of narrative highlight the eventual futility of mans' violence against man.\nSpecial Edition extras include a standard 20-minute documentary on the making of the film, mostly padded with the familiar musings of Hitchcock's daughter Pat and those still alive to remember when the film was in production, as well as feature-length commentary by film professor Drew Casper. Casper's insights into the film offer a rare glimpse into the mind and motivations of a director who rarely spoke in-depth about any of his films, and it would be in everyone's best interest if he were commissioned to record commentary tracks for future Hitchcock DVD releases.\nThough he would go on to make some of the most timeless masterpieces in cinema history ("Vertigo," "Psycho," "Rear Window" and "North By Northwest" among them), films from the first half of Alfred Hitchcock's career, beginning with mid-1920's silent features and culminating with "Lifeboat" and "Spellbound" near the end of WWII, represent some of the most daring and deft works of cinema's adolescent years. "Lifeboat" is a perfect example of a director with a taste for grandeur challenging himself with minimalism, and the result is thrilling.