Not many directors would have dared to make an entire suspense film set on board a lifeboat, but Alfred Hitchcock did it during World War Two, and it comes off pretty well.

He even squeezes in his customary guest appearance - via an advertisement for a lose-weight treatment on a newspaper floating past the boat.

Forthright performances by Tallulah Bankhead, William Bendix and Walter Slezak (as the only German) keep the tension crackling in this yarn based on a story by John Steinbeck.