Reeling Backward: "The Wreck of the Mary Deare" (1959)

"The Wreck of the Mary Deare" starts off as a seaborne action/adventure, turns into a character study and winds up as a staid courtroom drama/whodunit -- with a little splash of excitement at the end.

It's a well-made but schizophrenic film with jarring segues between land and sea. The movie is mostly notable today for marking the end of Gary Cooper's film acting career, the peak of Charlton Heston's and the beginning of Richard Harris'.

Alfred Hitchcock was originally slated to direct, but couldn't find a way to prevent it from turning into a courtroom procedural without jettisoning much of the novel by Hammond Innes. Hitch and his writer, Ernest Lehman, turned the project over to screenwriter Eric Ambler and British journeyman director Michael Anderson (“Around the World in 80 Days”), who pressed on.

Cooper suffered ill health during a big chunk of his latter years, and would be diagnosed with the cancer would claim his life shortly after the release of "Wreck." Despite having to suspend shooting several times due to his illness, Cooper still mastered a physically demanding role as Gideon Patch, a disgraced seaman trying desperately to retain his honor -- and keep his captain’s license -- after the ship under his command is abandoned by the crew.

He would only make one other film, “The Naked Edge,” before his death at age 60.

As for Harris, it was his first major film role – and nearly his last, at least on this side of the Atlantic. He hated the Hollywood filmmaking experience so much he returned to England straight away and eschewed American productions for years.

Harris plays Higgins, the devious second mate of the Mary Deare, who’s secretly working in cahoots with the owner to scuttle the ship to hide the fact the expensive cargo, some newfangled airplane engines, had already been offloaded in Rangoon. The captain had been lost at sea right before, and Patch, as first officer, took over.

Heston plays John Sands, a salvage team member who first sees the Mary Deare as a huge payday, an intact cargo ship floating dead and abandoned in a stormy sea. He clambers aboard to find Patch shambling about the decks like a ghost, covered in soot and muttering about the crew jumping ship even though the fire that caused the panic had been contained.

He has a large cut on his head from being brained by one of the crew (probably Higgins) and spends his first stretch of screen time seeming addled or senile. He orders Sands to help him beach the rapidly sinking ship on the Minquiers (aka "the Minkies"), a series of teeth-like rocks in the English Channel. Then, Patch extracts a promise from Sands not to tell anyone about the fact that the ship isn't at the bottom of the ocean until the official board of inquiry. He implies Sands will receive full salvage rights in return.

We spend the middle part of the movie wondering wondering about these two men -- whether Sands is merely a soulless mercenary, and if Patch's motivations are truly what he says. We learn Patch previously lost another ship under his command and had his license ("master's ticket") suspended. Another screw-up on his watch would mean the end of his career.

He sets about what seems very much like a cover-up: refusing to answer questions by the insurance company or owner of the ship; seeking out the daughter (Virginia McKenna) of the dead captain to see if he has letters that support his claim; renting a fishing boat so he can secretly go out to the wreck on his own; obscuring the full truth from Sands and his partner, which includes the fact Patch accidentally killed he captain when the latter attacked him in a drunken rage.

Then we arrive at the courtroom sequence, during which things look worse and worse for Patch. The rest of the crew testify he gave the order to abandon ship, though Patch denies it. He wants to read a statement before the court to explain everything, including revealing the fact the ship was not sunk. 

When this is discovered independently by other salvage crews -- thus depriving Sands of his payday -- it seems Patch has no allies.

The last sequence sees Sands and Patch joining forces again to secretly dive through the holes in the ship's hull to investigate if the airplane engines are still in the hull of the Mary Deare. Cooper, an experienced scuba diver, did his own stunts.

The movie is tied together only by the inimitable screen presence of Gary Cooper, whose ease at projecting a sort of plain decency allowed him to be one of the few actors to bridge the silent and sound film eras. We probably suspect Patch is going to turn out to be a hero, since that's the only kind of character he played. 

Gideon Patch is a more brooding sort, but the outcome of "The Wreck of the Mary Deare" is never in doubt.

Reeling Backward: "Carve Her Name With Pride" (1958)

One often encounters oddities in movies that would appear to have fallen out of the head of an addled screenwriter. But then they turn out to be true, or at least a lightly fictionalized version of the truth.

Such was the case of "Carve Her Name With Pride," a dramatization of real-life British World War II spy Violette Szabo, who was dropped into German-controlled France for several important missions. She was eventually captured by the Nazis and sent to a concentration camp, where was executed. She was posthumously awarded the George Cross, the civilian equivalent of the Victoria Cross, which roughly parallels our Congressional Medal of Honor. Szabo became only the second woman to earn that honor.

There's a scene after Szabo has been selected and trained by the Special Operations Executive and is about to be sent on her first mission when she is asked to select "her poem." This was a method of exchanging coded messages based on memorizing a poem, with certain keywords used for cryptography. She selects a poem written for her by her late husband, a French soldier who was killed in the war, "The Life That I Have," which is a bit of gooey romantic mush.

It sounds like a bunch of movie-making hooey -- except British agents really did use code poems, and "The Life That I Have" was one of the more famous choices. The only thing false about it was that it was written by Leo Marks, a famous cryptographer, and not Szabo's husband.

The film stars Virginia McKenna, a major Brit star during the 1950s and '60s, who won a BAFTA award for another WWWII movie previously featured in this space, "A Town Like Alice." She earned another British acting award nomination for "Pride," providing another strong, resolute performance.

McKenna's physicality contributes greatly to her success in these roles as a woman in dire circumstances who finds her courage through harsh experience. She is a willowy beauty, thin almost to the point of emaciation, with fine porcelain features and blonde hair. She doesn't look very tough, so when she excels in hand-to-hand combat training or wields a machine gun with great aptitude while mowing down Germans, it naturally makes the audience want to root for her.

About the machine gun scene: this apparently was a bit of Jessica Lynch-style propaganda trumped up by the military and passed along into the movie. In most likelihood, Szabo was captured when she ran out of ammunition. According to her Wikipedia page, German reports about the incident record no casualties.

My chief complaint about "A Town Like Alice" was that it included a love story with little relevance to the rest of the movie, and the same thing happens here. Szabo falls for Tony Fraser, a fellow agent played by Paul Scofield, and they end up working together. There is one touching scene after they've been captured where the men and women are separated on opposite sides of a barn, and they reach through the slats of wood to hold hands.

In general, though, the romance feels like something tacked on to give the film more feminine appeal.

Her treatment at the hands of the Nazis is rather cruel, and the movie is rather bold in depicting the fact that she was tortured -- though the camera is a little circumspect when the actual brutality begins, panning away while we hear her moans of pain. The filmmakers also aren't shy about showing how bedraggled Szabo looked after her interrogation, with McKenna looking positively wretched and, if possible, even thinner.

Directed by Lewis Gilbert, who helmed several James Bond films along with a number of very good movies, shows a steady hand for the material, keeping the focus on McKenna and how she reacts to everyone around her. He co-wrote the screenplay with Vernon Harris based on the book by R.J. Minney.

"Carve Her Name With Pride" is a serviceable piece of mid-century romantic drama with an espionage angle, featuring another memorable turn by Virginia McKenna. Perhaps as I traipse through her filmography, I'll come across a movie where wasn't made to mack on some chap needlessly.

Reeling Backward: "A Town Like Alice" (1956)

"A Town Like Alice" is a historic romance in which the romantic relationship is the least successful thing about the movie. Virginia McKenna and Peter Finch in fact spend less than 15 minutes of screen time together. It is her character's tremendous struggle to survive as a Japanese prisoner of war that drives the narrative. Her hooking up with an Australian soldier is merely a sidebar.

Maybe it's because this 1956 movies based on Nevil Shute's novel actually truncates the story to only focus on Jean Paget's experiences during and immediately after than the war, ending with her reuniting with Joe Harman back in his hometown that gives the film its name. The book went on to chronicle her experiences starting a raft of businesses that revitalized the economy of that  area.

Indeed, it was probably a mistake to keep the title of the movie the same as the book, since thematically they're on opposite sides of the same canoe. Heck, if it was up to me I would've ditched the Peter Finch part entirely.

I say this not because I'm contemptuous of the film, but because I think the rest of it is so strong that it doesn't really need the romance part. It ends up dragging the story down more than lifting it up. McKenna received the BAFTA Award for Best Actress, and well-deserved it was. Her performance is a knockout. Finch won the Best Actor prize, which seems out of place for what is obviously a supporting role.

"Alice" is notable for being one of the very first depictions of female POWs that was unflinching in how harsh the conditions were and how uncaring the Japanese soldiers (for the most part). It must have been quite a thing for midcentury audiences to watch finely mannered English ladies being forced to sweat and scrape through the jungles of Malaya.

The story opens with Jean and the rest of her office being evacuated as  a result of the Japanese invasion. She lingers behind to help her boss' wife with their children, and ends up escaping with them in their car. But they're trapped in a local seaside town because all the transport boats have already departed, and they're captured.

The men are rounded up and sent off by truck to a POW camp. The Japanese have little use for the women and children, so they're sent marching across the countryside with an elderly sergeant (Kenji Takaki) in tow. No prison commander will take them in, and they end up trudging to and fro for months on end, slowly dropping off like flies.

Director Jack Lee is unflinching in portraying their suffering, including shots of little children taking their last breaths that must have been quite controversial at the time. He's also extraordinarily successful at creating a mood of sweltering, oppressive environs. We can practically feel the jungle closing in on the wayward little troupe of women.

At one point they stumble upon Joe and his buddy, who are Australian POWs in charge of driving supplies up and down the main roads. They arrange for several convenient breakdowns of the truck so he can spend time with Jean, sharing a cigarette and telling her about his lonely home in the middle of the outback.

Later, Joe steals chickens from the prison commander's private coop and gives them to the women for food. He's soon caught, as he must have known he would be, and literally crucified for his crimes. Jean thinks him dead, but he actually survived the ordeal, setting up their big reunion to end the film.

The depiction of the Japanese is about typical for this era. Several of the officers were those big round Coke bottle glasses that for some reason became an icon of anti-Japanese propaganda. They're generally shown as incredibly proud and egotistical, and Napoleonic in their desire to subjugate these tall, imperious British ladies.

The sergeant, though, is portrayed as sympathetic and humanized, attempting to rescue one of the small boys from a snake. At some point her morphs from being their guard and leader to something more than a chaperone, following the women around in their wayward odyssey. 

I really enjoyed everything about "A Town Like Alice," except for the part that it purported to be all about.