Lifeboat is a 1944 American drama thriller in the survival film genre directed by Alfred Hitchcock from a story by John Steinbeck. The film stars Tallulah Bankhead with William Bendix. Also in the cast are Walter Slezak, Mary Anderson and John Hodiak. Additional roles in the boat were from Henry Hull, Heather Angel, Hume Cronyn, and Canada Lee. It is set entirely on a lifeboat launched from a sinking passenger vessel following a World War II naval attack.
The film is the first in Hitchcock's "limited-setting" films, the others being Rope (1948), Dial M for Murder (1954), and Rear Window (1954). It is the only film Hitchcock made with 20th Century Fox. The film received Academy Award nominations for Best Director, Best Original Story and Best Cinematography – Black and White. Tallulah Bankhead won the New York Film Critics Circle award for best actress of the year. Though highly controversial in its time for what many interpreted as a sympathetic depiction of the German U-Boat Captain, Lifeboat is regarded by modern film critics as a Hitchcock classic, and cited as one of Hitchcock's most underrated films.
