Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jul 7, 2019 20:22:21 GMT -8
The Cruel SeaViewed on free trial of BFI Players Classic on the Roku ChannelInfo: IMDBGenre: war, drama Type: classic British production from 1953 • 1.37 : 1 aspect ratio Runtime: 126 min. Starring: Jack Hawkins, Donald Sindes, Denholm Elliot Quick Rating: Jack Hawkins is sterling as the stoic captain who faces great difficulties without losing his head. By the end, you feel as though you been on the journey with them and have gotten to know them. This is a great film. Summary: An epic story of the hard life of the British sailors and officers who escorted convoys during WWII.
 Being a Jack Hawkins fan, it’s surprising it has taken so long to get around to this one. But there are indeed a lot of movies out there. Hawkins often plays a more idiosyncratic character. In this one, he is certainly the stern captain. But they do not blow up his character beyond human proportions. Hawkins is also deft at fleshing out his character with many dimensions in this one. He's famously memorable as the more one-note (but superb) General Allenby in Lawrence of Arabia. He may equal or exceed that in his role as captain of HMS Compass Rose. You can find bits of several films in this. There have been good films about escorting convoys across the Atlantic (such as Action in the North Atlantic). There have been good films about a prolonged confrontation between a destroyer and a U-boat (such as The Enemy Below). There have been plenty of “coming of officer age” movies (such as Mr. Roberts). And there have been good films about off-shore life (such as From Here to Eternity). You get a little bit of each in The Cruel Sea. There’s a lot that happens so the film keeps moving along fairly nicely. Much of the dynamic is between Hawkins (as captain) and Sinden (as his senior officer). The captain is hard, but fair. The officer is green but competent and willing to learn. The two hours runtime, with plenty of action, does lead to the phenomenon, as one reviewer wrote, “At the end one feels as though you had actually been on the corvette yourself with the crew.” This British film mainly stays away from gimmicky and schmaltzy stuff so common in Hollywood films. This is a film for adults with adult attention spans and tastes. This is a can’t-miss film for any aficionado of war movies.
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Brad Nelson
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עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jul 7, 2019 20:34:16 GMT -8
One note about my free trial of BFI Player Classics on The Roku Channel. It’s a bit of a bait-and-switch. That is, when searching my Roku for a way to view The Cruel Sea, it offered up the BFI Player Classic channel as a subscription add-on. I went online to check it out first to see what they offered. I went online to the BFI Player site and they seem to have a fairly good collection of movies. But that selection is severely paired down as offered through the Roku. At $5.99 per month, the full selection at the BFI Player site doesn’t look too bad (presumably you would stream this via your tablet or computer). But the scant offering of the BFI Player via the Roku device is certainly not worth it. |
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Post by artraveler on Jul 7, 2019 21:34:18 GMT -8
The book is excellent at telling the story of the battle of the Atlantic and although the movie fails to develop all the characters fully, Jack Hawkins does a credible job as captain. Can you imagine an English war movie of the 50s -70s without Jack Hawkins?
When the war started for England in 1939 they had shortages of everything. One of the most critical was escorts for convoys. The first ship, more properly called a trawler, was barely able to navigate in North Atlantic waters with a top speed of about 20 knots, and rode so low in the water that it was half submarine. About half way through the book Compass Rose is sunk and the crew, or most of the crew, get a new escort destroyer. That corresponds with the time period of late 43 to the end of the war.
One other fictional story of the escorts, not made into a movie is HMS Ulysses, by the late Alister MacLean. It is the story of a cruiser on the Murmansk run. The time is later in the war, 43/44 and this is the story of how rough convoy duty was for the sailors. It is typical MacLean full of action, pathos and drama, although this time there are no spies.
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Post by timothylane on Jul 8, 2019 6:10:53 GMT -8
Interesting. By 1944 there was very little combat on the Murmansk/Archangel runs. The last surface action was in December 1943 (the sinking of the Scharnhorst off North Cape), and the last one before that was a year earlier. Of course, surface action in winter was pretty much a night action no matter what time of day it was.
But the conditions were still hideous. I assume that's what MacLean focused on. That could be interesting in itself. And there was still the possibility of a German attack (no doubt the U-boats and bombers still made the occasional appearance, to little effect by then).
If the Ulysses was supposed to be a (fictitious, of course) cruiser, I suppose it would have been a member of the Leander class of light cruisers, named after male Greek/Roman mythological figures. There were 5 of them, 2 of which were sunk (Neptune and Orion), the Leander itself (theoretically turned over to New Zealand at some point), and the 2 made famous by the River Plate battle against the Admiral Graf Spee (Ajax and Achilles). There were also 3 given to Australia pre-war and named after Australian cities: Hobart survived the war. Sydney sank the Italian light cruiser Bartolomeo Colleoni and was later sunk without survivors by the German raider Kormoran, and Perth was sunk in the aftermath of the Battle of the Java Sea.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jul 8, 2019 7:28:17 GMT -8
They couldn’t have staged the war without him. Here’s Monsarrat’s novel on Amazon. I don’t see a Kindle version. Here’s some info on destroyer escorts including a list of books on the subject. Wiki notes that one of the problems of the first destroyers pressed into escort duty is that they were built for the slower speeds (and couldn’t handle the range, as you noted): I’m trying to find the upgraded class of escort that replaced the sunken HMS Compass Rose. According to Wiki, the Compass Rose was a Flower-class corvette. The Compass Rose was portrayed in the movie by HMS Coreopsis (K32) (one of the few remaining — possibly the only one — was found in Malta by one of the film’s technical advisers). The Wiki article notes that the ship that replaced the Compass Rose in the movie was the Castle-class corvette, HMS Portchester Castle (named HMS Saltash Castle in the movie). The article also notes; |
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jul 8, 2019 7:43:55 GMT -8
It interesting to see a young Denholm Elliot in this. His role is relatively minor but he plays a solid character. It’s interesting that early in the film they have a rather prickly first officer played by Stanley Baker. I won’t tell you much more than that. But it shows the depth of this film. Not all aspects were complimentary to the British Navy. Even some of the captain’s actions were dubious although the situations he faced showed the often no-win scenario. Do you stop to pick up survivors or not? Apparently the Laconia incident changed the dynamic (and official British policy) in this regard. |
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jul 8, 2019 7:47:55 GMT -8
Here's a Flower-class corvette. With all due respect, it really does look like a bucket of bolts and looks like the type of ship used in the movie for the HMS Compass Rose.  Here's the Castle-class:  |
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jul 8, 2019 7:58:31 GMT -8
They do mention making a run to Murmansk although we deal with the homeward bound aspect. Just after the first officer is figuring out things with his girl, they describe the run:
Thus enters The Enemy Below portion of the film. Julie was quite a dish. It was a sort of “Love at first party" thing. She was an aid in operations so she did in fact know the hazards that Lockhart would be facing on the way to Murmansk.
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Post by artraveler on Jul 8, 2019 12:45:37 GMT -8
Stanley Baker and Jack Hawkins show up in the 70s film Zulu. A great movie that is as complementary to the Zulu as to the Welsh regiment that fought them at Roark's Drift. Actually only a company about 125 men held off over 4000 Zulu. A tribute to massed firepower and discipline on that day in 1879 they were the most deadly men on the planet. And don't forget Men of Harleach done here by Charlotte Church. Why don't we have such music for our regiments? www.bing.com/search?q=men+of+harleach&form=APMCS1&PC=APMC |
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Post by timothylane on Jul 8, 2019 12:56:26 GMT -8
Hawkins plays a fairly minor role there; the main stars were Baker and Michael Caine as the two lieutenants in command at Rorke's Drift. (Caine wanted to play Private Hook, whose descendants didn't like his being portrayed as a troublemaker before his great moment in rescuing patients from the hospital while tunneling through the wall and fighting off pursuing Zulus.) Nigel Green as the Colour Sergeant also played a major role. The depiction of Rorke's Drift is reasonably accurate, and the most remarkable parts of it are the most accurate.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Jul 8, 2019 14:59:22 GMT -8
If you can get to the "Share" widget, you can embed a video here . . . like this (I hope). Hit the "Insert Video" from the toolbar of the post box and paste in that embed link you copy from the video share box.
That's a grand song. And it's going to take mountains and mountains of plastic surgery to make that girl look presentable. Oh...she's a cutie.
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