17: Saboteur (1942)

Even by 1942, with many of his greatest films still ahead of him, Hitchcock was considered a master. Deploying many of the best tricks from films like THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH and THE 39 STEPS, Hitchcock molded his classical everyman thriller to the American imagination early in their involvement in WWII. SABOTEUR plays directly to audiences at home, fully aware of the boys overseas, allowing them to live out a fantastical adventure that contributes to the war effort without actually fighting in battle.

Of course, the film’s plot is built around a barely comprehensible conspiracy of saboteurs trying to undermine the war effort. Thus it serves as a wonderful appetizer to John Frankenheimer’s all-time conspiracy classic THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, in which the saboteurs’ target America’s democracy itself.