John Steinbeck, Lifeboat

Michael J. Meyer (DePaul University)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1944

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Cinema/ Film/ TV
- Screenplay

Resources

The movie, “Lifeboat”, begins shortly after a merchant marine ship is sunk somewhere in the Atlantic by a German U-boat. Then, before finally being sunk itself by an Allied aircraft, the U-boat continues to shell the lifeboats which are filled with the ships’ survivors. The damage is total, creating a setting where the surrounding waters are filled with bodies and debris. As the camera zooms in on one remaining lifeboat, viewers see an elegantly dressed woman writer, Constance Porter (Tallulah Bankhead), who sits alone in the fog, filming the destruction with a hand-held camera as if she were the director of a documentary. As she films, Kovac, the engineer of the merchant marine vessel (John Hodiak), swims up to the boat and …

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1658 words

Citation: Meyer, Michael J.. "Lifeboat". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 13 April 2007 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=12866, accessed 25 November 2024.]

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