Cinema Classics Seminar: SABOTEUR (1942)

Tuesday, June 23, 2026, 6:30 pm to 9:30 pm
Instructor: Erich Hertz, Ph.D., Siena University
Often considered Alfred Hitchcock’s first truly American film, Tuesday, June 23, 2026, 6:30 pm to 9:30 pm
Instructor: Erich Hertz, Ph.D., Siena University
Often considered Alfred Hitchcock’s first truly American film, SABOTEUR (1942) extends his early Hollywood turn toward larger set pieces and asks what it might mean to be “American” just months after the attack on Pearl Harbor. In one of Hitchcock’s earlier uses of the “wrong man” plot, Robert Cummings plays Barry Kane, an aircraft worker framed for sabotage and forced into flight as he searches for a network operating in plain sight. His journey brings him into an uneasy alliance with Patricia Martin (Priscilla Lane), whose skepticism gives way to the recognition that the threat is not only foreign but also domestic.
Our seminar will explore how these pressures organize the film’s concerns, with special focus on the instability of innocence under wartime conditions and the reshaping of public life through suspicion. While SABOTEUR (1942) works within thriller conventions, it also reflects early U.S. wartime anxiety, raising questions about how democratic identity is reconfigured when security becomes a dominant frame. We will consider how Hitchcock uses iconic American spaces to both align with and unsettle expectations, producing suspense that turns less on the enemy’s visibility than on the fragility of trust. extends his early Hollywood turn toward larger set pieces and asks what it might mean to be “American” just months after the attack on Pearl Harbor. In one of Hitchcock’s earlier uses of the “wrong man” plot, Robert Cummings plays Barry Kane, an aircraft worker framed for sabotage and forced into flight as he searches for a network operating in plain sight. His journey brings him into an uneasy alliance with Patricia Martin (Priscilla Lane), whose skepticism gives way to the recognition that the threat is not only foreign but also domestic.
Our seminar will explore how these pressures organize the film’s concerns, with special focus on the instability of innocence under wartime conditions and the reshaping of public life through suspicion. While SABOTEUR (1942) works within thriller conventions, it also reflects early U.S. wartime anxiety, raising questions about how democratic identity is reconfigured when security becomes a dominant frame. We will consider how Hitchcock uses iconic American spaces to both align with and unsettle expectations, producing suspense that turns less on the enemy’s visibility than on the fragility of trust.