Reeling Backward: "Sink the Bismarck!" (1960)

 

"Sink the Bismarck!" is the sort of movie you make 15 years after the war's end, not while it's still going on or freshly seared into memory. This straightforward, largely historically accurate take on one of World War II's great naval engagements has a slightly detached feel, much like its protagonist, Captain Jonathan Shepard (Kenneth More). 

He comes into his new job as the British Navy's chief of operations resolved to make decisions without any emotion or personal regard. In the end, Shepard breaks down and relinquishes his vice grip on his own humanity. It's a lot more touchy-feely take than you'd see back in the 1940s, I think.

It covers the brief war record of the Bismarck, the largest battleship Germany ever built. It was launched into the North Atlantic in 1940 to attack British convoy lines, and in its first major engagement easily destroyed the HMS Hood, the pride of the British navy. This led Prime Minister Winston Churchill to order every available ship and plane to hunt down the Bismarck, which they eventually did after much heroism and stupidity.

About that stupidity: At one point some British torpedo planes actually launched an attack against one of their own ships, because they hadn't been told it would be operating in the area and mistook it for the German juggernaut. Luckily, their new-fangled magnetic torpedoes malfunctioned and exploded as soon as they hit the water, otherwise hundreds of British seamen could've been lost.

To its credit, the screenplay by Edmund H. North, based on the book by C.S. Forester, depicts both the brilliance and incompetence of the men (and a few women) involved in the war at sea. At one point the commanders order a new ship with an ill-trained crew to take on the Bismarck, and it comes away -- barely -- after a terrible pasting.

The battle scenes are generally quite good, using a mix of models, stock footage and on-set recreations. The studio also had the cooperation of the navy, which allowed them the use of some actual WWII vessels that were about to be decommissioned. The shift between these different types of footage is nearly seamless. Although director Lewis Gilbert has a tendency to re-use certain shots over and over again, such as the one where the German officer orders the big guns to "Fire!"

Gilbert also directed several other military-themed films, including the outstanding "Damn the Defiant!". I guess he had a thing for punctuation in his titles. And he made the original "Alfie" and a couple of middling James Bond flicks.

Shepard is not the name of the real Navy C.O.O. at the time of the Bismarck engagement -- one of the movie's few "pumping up" of the narrative. They also shrink the time scope to give it more of a cinema vérité scope. There's also the addition of a supposed rivalry between Shepard and Admiral Günther Lütjens (Karel Štěpánek), the actual German fleet commander.

In the fabricated exposition, we learn that Lütjens commanded the German ships that sunk Shephard's vessel out from under him the previous year. This sets up a chessboard match between the two, with Shepard working on a large schematic map with little models representing the warships, while Lütjens stands on the Bismarck's bridge and barks orders to the Bismarck's commander, Ernst Lindemann (Carl Möhner).

"Sink the Bismarck!" is generally pretty evenhanded in its depiction of the Axis forces -- again, something you wouldn't see in a contemporaneous WWII film. Though the story is unequivocal in portraying Lütjens as a jingoistic fool, who continues the mission even after the Bismarck has sustained serious damage to its oil tanks. The impression left is that the more conservative Lindemann would've saved the Bismarck to fight another day.

The film is also notable for being the rare war picture with a substantive female character. Women's Royal Naval Service Second Officer Anne Davis acts as Shepard's right-hand woman, relaying his orders, offering advice and acting as go-between for the command staff he (at first) treats rather shabbily.

There's even a hint of a budding romance, or at least camaraderie, as Davis allows Shepard a moment of privacy when he learns that his son, who was thought lost in the hunt for the Bismarck, has been rescued. Davis is a model of upper-class British professionalism and refinement. Ironically, actress Dana Wynter was actually born in Germany (to English and Hungarian parents).

I certainly enjoyed "Sink the Bismarck!", though its quest for a documentary-like style leaves it less viscerally engaging than one might hope for. That very British stiff upper lip only takes you so far, movie-wise.

Reeling Backward: "The Purple Plain" (1954)

"The Purple Plain" is two movies in one, each of which work decently independently but don't really meld together in any sort of satisfying or even logical way.

It's one of Gregory Peck's darker roles, playing a Canadian pilot in the British Royal Air Force assigned to Burma in the waning days of World War II. Squadron Leader Bill Forrester is widely ostracized within the unit, because of his daredevil flying tactics and his churlish behavior toward his fellow officers. The universal assessment is that he's "over the bend."

Despite sharing a tent with a man named Blore (Maurice Denham) for several months, they know virtually nothing about each other -- other than Blore's continuing insistence that Forrester would find his life more purposefully if was married like himself. Little does he know (since Forrester won't say), but Forrester lost his newlywed bride during a London air raid early in the war.

Since then, he's been on a one-man suicide mission in the skies.

The first half of the movie is taken up with Forrester gradually coming out of his shell with the help of Anna, a refugee from Rangoon who is helping the local Burmese refugees along with Miss McNab (Brenda De Banzie), an indomitable Scottish missionary. The quiet, soulful Anna soothes and calms Forrester, and he tells her the source of his pain when his wife was killed.

"After that I didn't want to go on living. You'd think that'd be easy enough in war, but it didn't work. I wanted to die, but I got medals instead."

Anna is played by Win Min Than, a luminous beauty whose appearance in "The Purple Plain" constituted her one and only film role. The romance between Anna and Forrester is notable for its fairly progressive take on interracial romance -- none of the other Brits or Burmese seem to regard it as any big deal. Though it should be noted that their only kiss is filmed from an obscuring angle behind a large boulder. The film ends with an image of Forrester climbing into a bed where she lies sleeping, which was something of a taboo circa 1954.

As soon as the audience gets engaged in this love affair, though, the manly adventure portion commences and Anna is not seen again (except once, briefly) until that ending.

Forrester and his young new navigator Carrington (Lyndon Brook) are assigned to fly Blore to his new assignment. The aircraft depicted in the film are Mosquitos, peppy little two-seat fighter/bombers depicted in other films such as "633 Squadron." Blore is ensconced in a hammock hung in the bomb bay. Unfortunately, one of their engines bursts into flames and they crash-land 20 miles deep into Japanese territory.

Movies of this ilk usually set up a race between the heroic stranded Allied servicemen and the relentless enemy hounding their tails, but here we never see or hear any trace of the Japanese. The only race is between the three men and their own impending demise from exposure to the brutal Burmese heat and lack of food and water.

Forrester determines that no rescue mission will ever find them, and urges them to march to the river that marks the boundary of enemy territory. The pugnacious Blore, a desk job man with little grasp of the intricacies of aviation tactics, insists they stay. Eventually Forrester forces the decision, and they rig up a stretcher for Carrington (whose leg was burned in the crash) and set off.

Director Robert Parrish manages to capture the overheated atmosphere of Burma, showing the sweat pouring off the characters' heads and staining clear through their clothes. He also adds a constant buzz of insects to the soundtrack during the sequence on the eponymous plain, which adds to the oppressive feeling of that portion of the film.

"The Purple Plain" was a box-office hit that was nominated for Best Film in the BAFTAs, the British equivalent of the Oscars.

The story was based on a novel by H.E. Bates, a military reporter who traveled to Burma during the war, and translated for the screen by Eric Ambler. It ends up feeling like two incomplete halves of a good movie. In the second half the central dynamic is the contrast between Forrester, who remains resolute and brave, and Blore, who becomes increasingly unhinged and eventually abandons his fellows.

This would seem to set up the idea that Blore's assertion had been true, that having a purpose in life -- i.e., a family and/or loved one -- allows a man to persevere. Forrester, having found love again with Anna, is able to endure. But this then begs the question of why family man Blore succumbs when confronted with life-threatening challenges.

So Blore is right for Forrester, but wrong about himself?

2.5 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "Attack on the Iron Coast" (1968)

A laughably bad World War II picture from 1968, "Attack on the Iron Coast" registers as nearly a parody of the genre, replete with hammy acting and silly action scenes. The director, Paul Wendkos, made his name with "Gidget" and its myriad sequels, and is mostly known for his television work. After making this film starring Lloyd Bridges -- another TV vet with "Sea Hunt" -- Wendkos would go on to direct the pilot of "Hawaii Five-O" and a couple of its first-season episodes.

I'd say his talent found its perfect match.

Bridges plays Jamie Wilson, a Canadian major who concocts a hare-brained scheme called Mad Dog to ram a British destroyer into the German-held port of La Plagé. The Nazi regime is using the French dry dock to repair its battleships with great efficiency, adding to the massive naval losses of Allied ships. Wilson wants to load a ship up with explosives and blow the whole thing to smithereens.

The story essentially consists of two parts: the hard-charging Wilson trying to convince his conservative British cohorts to OK the mission, and then the mission itself with its greatest critic forced to command the expedition. Andrew keir plays Captain Owen Franklin, who haughtily refuses to have anything to do with Mad Dog at least a half-dozen times, but comes to be its greatest advocate -- even going so far as to ignore an order from high command to abort the mission.

Keir gives a straightforward performance, as unctuousness gives way to stoic English stiff upper lip in the heat of battle.

Interestingly, Franklin is clearly portrayed as being a seasoned older officer, while Wilson is supposed to be the young gun continually challenging his elders with his brash tactics. In fact, the gray-bearded Keir was a 42-year-old youngster when this movie came out, while Bridges was 55 (but looked about 38).

Mad Dog may sound like Hollywood claptrap, but it was actually based on a real raid on St. Nazaire in March 1942 that succeeded using almost exactly the same tactics depicted in the movie. It' a wild enough story that one wonders why the studio didn't simply do a historically accurate story using the names of the real combatants, along the lines of "A Bridge Too Far."

My guess is the producers felt an urge to load up the story with the usual war-movie cliches -- two commanders in conflict, a romance running as sidebar (Wilson's wife is played by Sue Wilson), and a heroically implausible sacrifice by the main character at the end.

The latter occurs when Wilson, buried in wreckage aboard the ship's bridge, struggles to reach the detonation clock. The wires have been severed in the collision with the dry dock gate. A German soldier shoots Wilson, but in his dying swoon he manages to contact the wires and the whole thing goes boom.

Never mind that earlier Franklin had specifically told Wilson (and thereby the audience) that the device was self-contained so it would still detonate if the ship was damaged. And yet two thin little copper wires are left running exposed to the bridge floor. Ridiculous.

The portrayal of the Nazi commanders is knee-slapping goofy. Walter Gotell plays Van Horst, who prefers to eat and drink and debauch rather than pay attention to his duties guarding the coast. When we first meet the German officers, they're literally watching a skin flick while gorging themselves, and cannot even tear their eyes away from the lascivious images of women undressing to duly respond to reports of a strange ship approaching.

"Attack on the Iron Coast" has nothing going for it. The raid upon which it was based may have been a rousing military success, but as war films go the fictional version is totally fubar.

1 stars out of four