Lifeboat is a 1944 World War II war film, directed by Alfred Hitchcock from a story written by John Steinbeck. The film stars Tallulah Bankhead, William Bendix, Walter Slezak, Mary Anderson, John Hodiak, Henry Hull, Heather Angel, Hume Cronyn and Canada Lee, and is set entirely on a lifeboat. The film received Academy Award nominations for Best Director, Best Original Motion Picture Story and Best Black and White Cinematography.

The film holds the world record for smallest set ever used on a film. It has never been beaten. (The closest any other film has come was the 1948 novelty film Bill and Coo, which featured an all-bird cast and was filmed on a miniature village built onto a 15' x 30' tabletop, which was located inside a larger studio.)

In the Atlantic during WWII, a ship and a German U-boat are involved in a battle and both are sunk. The survivors from the ship gather in one of the boats. They are from a variety of backgrounds: an international journalist, a rich businessman, the radio operator, a nurse, a steward, a sailor and an engineer with communist tendencies. Trouble starts when they pull a man out of the water who turns out to be from the U-boat. Written by Col Needham

In a lifeboat during World War II, survivors from the freighter torpedoed by a U-boat huddle together including columnist Constance Porter (Tallulah Bankhead), the ship's engineer Kovac (John Hodiak), radio operator Stanley Garrett (Hume Cronyn), nurse Alice MacKenzie (Mary Anderson), millionaire Charles 'Ritt' Rittenouse (Henry Hull), seaman Gus Smith (William Bendix), steward Joe (Canada Lee), and Mrs. Higgins (Heather Angel), a hysterical Englishwoman holding her dead baby. After the baby is buried at sea, the mother drowns herself. Though the inhabitants of the lifeboat come from vastly different backgrounds, they quickly set aside the social and economic differences that divide them in a united effort to survive. A German seaman Willi (Walter Slezak) is picked up out of the sea and Constane interprets for him. Willi suggests in German the direction toward Bermuda. During a crisis, he shouts at them in English. He was the U-boat commander. Willi has a compass and is strong enough to row them to a German supply ship The others allow him to take command of the boat, their only hope of survival is to be rescued by a German supply ship, which will presumably take them straight to a concentration camp. Written by alfiehitchie