Sabotage (1936 film)

Not to be confused with Alfred Hitchcock's 1942 film Saboteur.

Sabotage
US theatrical release poster
Directed byAlfred Hitchcock
Screenplay byCharles Bennett
Story byJoseph Conrad
Produced byMichael Balcon
StarringSylvia Sidney
Oskar Homolka
John Loder
CinematographyBernard Knowles
Edited byCharles Frend
Music byJack Beaver
Distributed byGeneral Film Distributors
Release dates
  • 2 December 1936 (1936-12-02) (London trade preview)
  • 11 January 1937 (1937-01-11) (USA)
  • 8 February 1937 (1937-02-08) (UK)
Running time
76 minutes[1]
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish

Sabotage, released in the United States as The Woman Alone,[1] is a 1936 British espionage thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock starring Sylvia Sidney, Oskar Homolka, and John Loder. It is loosely based on Joseph Conrad's 1907 novel The Secret Agent, about a woman who discovers that her husband is a terrorist agent.[1]

Sabotage should not be confused with Hitchcock's film Secret Agent, which was also released in 1936, but which instead is loosely based on two stories in the 1927 collection Ashenden: Or the British Agent by W. Somerset Maugham.[1] It also should not be confused with Hitchcock's unrelated 1942 American film Saboteur.

In 2017, a poll of 150 actors, directors, writers, producers and critics for Time Out magazine ranked the film 44th best British film ever.[2] In 2021, The Daily Telegraph ranked the film at No. 3 on its list of "The 100 best British films of all time".[3]

  1. ^ a b c d "Alfred Hitchcock Collectors' Guide: Sabotage (1936)". Brenton Film.
  2. ^ "The 100 best British films". Time Out. Retrieved 24 October 2017
  3. ^ "The 100 best British films of all time". The Telegraph. 3 July 2021.