Stub: Random Scribbling #6927

I am about 20 minuted into Alfred Hitchcock's Sabotage (1936). There seems to be an undercover detective(?) seemingly doing his job to uncover the identity and the doings of a saboteur. This person seems to be a theatre owner, with a wife(?). The relationship doesn't scream to be happy. The undercover detective seems to be posing as a next-door grocer, and is cosying upto the wife(?) and his smaller brother (the soft spot of the lady, clearly). 

My thought was whether the word sabotage here has a double entendre. Whether the "sabotage" here refers to both the larger scheme of political happenings as well as the "sabotage" of the home life of the saboteur (a delightfully ironic twist, I may add). 

In any case, if that is not so, I'd like to preserve an alternate reality in where the actions of the detective go beyond the job at hand (read: with adulterous intentions). Having said that, it is a cultural thing too to ponder if outright portrayal of adultery was considered scandalous at the time. If it was, then the sly glances and the reaction shots are extremely cheeky and purely cinematic.

Of course, being 20 minutes into the movie, this all may very well be a product of my imagination. But then there is the bias - you tend to credit prolific film makers like Hitchcock with perhaps more than they even sought to achieve! This isn't slander in the least - I pay homage to his cinematic brilliance, and wholly consider it possible that all such nuances were deliberate.

More on this later, once I've finished the movie. No promises.

Later: I just finished the movie. The loose ends tied up quite nicely. Another Hitchcock success, I must say. Good stuff.

Earlier today I watched the much more modern The Kids Are Alright. It felt like such a real modern-day drama. Natural conflict, natural acting. Really beautiful. Extremely heteronormative gay couple, however.