SABOTAGE

One of the most playful of Hitchcock's British thrillers, SABOTAGE doesn’t waste one second of its taut 77-minute runtime, ratcheting up the suspense in pointillistically beautiful ways. Sylvia Sidney is the unsuspecting wife of a London cinema owner (Oskar Homolka) whom a Scotland Yard detective (John Loder) comes to believe is behind a string of terrorist attacks. The gripping centerpiece — involving a boy, a film canister and a ticking time bomb — is one of the most heart-stopping moments of pure suspense in all of Hitchcock’s canon.