The last scene of Saboteur

I saw Saboteur again last night on the big screen at the Brattle in Harvard Square. It's very middling Hitchcock, a film that never completely comes together, in plot or vision. I do, however, love the last scene, the only famous moment in the movie when the hero and villain climb out onto the torch of the Statue of Liberty. One of the things I love about the sequence is how varied the shots are. We don't just get an establishing shot of the statue followed by close-ups of the action, we get this complex series of Matte shots. Here's a few of them below. Maybe next I'll re-watch the first X-Men film and compare their sequence that takes place on top of theStatue of Liberty. I remember the action being great but I don't recall any cuts to a longshot of the statue at all.

Robert F. Boyle, 1909 - 2010

Robert Boyle, who was a four-time Oscar nominee as an art director and production director, passed away Sunday at the age of 100. He had a long, amazing career, including his work as an art director and/or production designer on six Hitchcock films. Saboteur, Shadow of a Doubt, North by Northwest, The Birds, and Marnie.

Below are six of my favorite frames from those films.