Trailer
Plot summary
A power blackout hits the district around the cinema where Karl Verloc and his wife live above the auditorium. Customers demand their money back; Verloc comes in through the back entrance, washes sand from his hands and tells his wife to make the refunds, saying he has money coming in. He is part of a group of terrorists from an unnamed European country preparing attacks in London, and his contact is unhappy that the newspapers made light of the short loss of electricity. Scotland Yard suspects him and has placed Detective Sergeant Ted Spencer undercover in the greengrocer's shop next to the cinema. Spencer befriends Mrs. Verloc and her teenage brother Stevie, who lives with the couple, and cannot tell whether she is involved or knows nothing.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Sabotage (1936)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Hitchcock wanted Robert Donat, with whom he had worked on The 39 Steps, to play Spencer, but Donat's chronic asthma forced him to cast John Loder instead. Donat's studio boss, Alexander Korda, refused to release him from his contract.
- Quentin Tarantino reused the scene in which Stevie is first barred from boarding a bus because of the nitrate film he is carrying. Tarantino put it in Inglourious Basterds to explain the nitrate film used in that character's terrorist plot.
- Hitchcock chose the young Bobby Rietti, later known as Robert Rietti, for the part of Steve, but was unable to sign him for legal reasons.
- The film changed Verloc's first name from Adolf, the name he has in Conrad's novel, presumably because it had too many connotations by the time the film was made. Many viewers assumed the unnamed hostile power behind the bombings was Nazi Germany.
