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Sequence Analysis of 'the boy with the bomb' in Hitchcock's Sabotage (1936)


Alfred Hitchcock’s British period dates from the mid-1920s when he made his directorial debut, until 1939 when, as England’s most acclaimed director, he left London for Hollywood. Serious critics would initially see his move to America as a sell-out and insist that his subsequent films were not up to the level of his best British pictures. This perspective began to change only in the 1950s and 60s when Charles Rohmer, Claude Chabrol, and other auteur critics championed the Hollywood films as the fullest expression of Hitchcock’s mature style. Yet even as attention has increasingly focused on the Hollywood period, the British films have maintained their enthusiasts. Many are good by any standard and still supremely watchable. They are also of special interest to the film theorist and historian as the formative work of a gifted director within a still nascent medium. We will discuss about ‘’Sabotage’’, made and released in 1936 for Gaumont-British Pictures. In his conversation with Truffaut, although having said “An author takes three or four years to write a novel; its his whole life. Then other people take it over completely (in making it into a movie) …I simply can’t see that”, he goes on to deviate from this ‘rule’ of his, when he chose to make an adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s 1907 novel, “The Secret Agent”.


“Sabotage is one of the strangest and darkest films, not just in Hitchcock's career, but in cinema in general. It's gloomy, desperate, and almost impossible to identify with any of the characters. And for all those reasons, I really, really like it.” - Dominik Moll


Sabotage centres around Mr. Verloc (Oscar Homolka), a member of a gang of saboteurs who plan to bomb London. He runs a cinema with his unsuspecting wife (Sylvia Sidney) and her younger brother Stevie (Desmond Tester). Hot on his trail is Ted (John Loder), a Scotland Yard detective posing as a grocer. The film is dominated by a particular set piece, a lengthy scene in which Stevie carries a package across London, not knowing that there's a bomb beneath the unassuming brown paper wrapping, which was given to him by Mr. Verloc to deliver within a specific time to a certain place. When his initial acts of sabotage, like disrupting London's electrical power for a few hours, were deemed "laughable" by his superiors, Verloc was instructed to deliver the bomb instead.

The sequence starts off with Stevie walking away from the camera, the eye of the camera tracking the package.
Tracking shot culminates into a mid long shot of Stevie entering a shopping district.
A long shot of the busy road works to establish the space of action

In the following shot, Stevie is followed by the camera as he nears an attraction.

Here Stevie has already been pressured by an excited crowd to be a volunteer for the salesman.

In this two shot, after a whole chain of events, he is now prepared "for stardom", which also hints at the upcoming chain of actions, where he will be the centre of attraction.
Released from the salesman, Stevie stumbles away from there, as further distractions engage him, with the camera following him and zooming in to a close up of the package.

At this point, the letter which accompanied the bomb is superimposed above the shot of the package, reminding that time is playing an important role in this sequence. The suspense has already started building.


The image of the letter remains constant, as vary angle shots of Stevie on his way to Piccadilly Circus continues in the background. 

As a static wide shot, the camera sees Stevie unsuccessfully try to cross the road, as the Lord Mayor's show day celebrations begin.

The static frame almost morphs into a POV shot of Stevie, who also remains immobile for the next couple of minutes.

We see gears clicking, symbolizing the passage of time, double exposured over the package.

Followed by the double exposure of the clock over the package, showing the time to go from 1:00 to 1:20.

Next we see as the show ends, the crowd gets back to the hustle and bustle of daily life.

Pushing through the crowd, Stevie gets on a bus, hoping to get to Piccadilly Circus in time. It seems as if the whole universe is conspiring against Stevie reaching his destination in time. And the suspense grows even further, as the audience has information that the character doesn't.

In this two shot, a conversation is held between Stevie and the conductor, who against his better judgement allows Stevie to board the bus with celluloid films.

This mid shot of the interior of the bus establishes the new space of action.

Stevie is seen to be interacting with an old lady and her puppy. All the characters in this shot, have a persona of innocence. And this heightens the suspense even more, as we watch the time nearing the dreaded 1:45 pm.

This is followed by a series of intercuts between Stevie inside the bus, to clocks passing by, to a mid closeup of the package.


The suspense is still ever-growing with just a few minutes to 1:45.


It is followed by a traffic signal going red, and the bus at a standstill.

The clock shows it to be just 2 minutes to 1:45.

The stop light becomes nerve wracking, as the suspense is at its peak. The audience have been led up to this and expect some closure very soon.



This shot shows the time to be 1:45.

The go signal almost hints at the upcoming spectacle.

A close up of the clock showing the time to be 1:45.

An extreme close up of the minute hand at 45 minutes mark move to the 46 minutes mark.

Along with the visuals, the background score also hints at the big reveal.

And the majorly suspenseful sequence comes to an end with Stevie being unable to reach his destination in time, and the bomb going off in the bus itself.

This sequence, in which young Stevie carries this package across town for his sinister brother-in-law is a typically masterful Hitchcockian suspense set piece, despite Hitch's later disavowal of the scene. The tension builds steadily as Stevie is continually delayed in his journey. He was told to get his package to a cloak room by a certain time, but obviously not told why or what was inside, so he doesn't really feel the urgency of the mission. Instead, he dawdles along the way, admiring the goods at an open-air market, getting pressed into a toothpaste demonstration by an aggressive street hawker and stopping to watch a parade that prevents him from crossing a street. Throughout the sequence, Hitchcock frequently cuts back to the package that the audience knows carries a sinister cargo, and also inserts shots of clock faces to show the passage of time as the minute of the bomb's detonation ticks slowly closer. It's a harrowing scene, and by the end each stoplight, each delay that keeps the boy from his destination, only makes the pulse pound harder and faster. As the final moment draws closer, the cutting accelerates, faster and faster, until the economical final montage: a few quick shots of the package in the boy's arms, followed by a shot of the tram he's on exploding.
Hitchcock’s sense of humor also comes into play here, and it’s as morbid as ever. When Stevie sits on the bus, he’s next to a sweet old lady carrying an adorable little puppy. Stevie even plays with the dog right before the bomb goes off. These three figures feel like a tableau of purity, kindness and innocence and it’s almost comical. Hitchcock reinforces this by cutting to the three main adult characters (Sidney, Homolka, and Loder) having a laugh.

Hitchcockian suspense is built upon dramatic irony. The viewer knows something that the characters don’t, and the director uses that privileged but limited information to manipulate the audience. It scarcely matters whether we sympathize with the men or not; the skilful director forces us to take part in the scene. It does matter, however, whether the men escape unharmed; the audience must experience the same relief that the men do for the scene to work emotionally.

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