This blog was begun on the evening of March 15 2021 :
I'm back at home tonight, and I watched a most excellent seagoing drama : "Away All Boats"(1956), starring Jeff Chandler as the macho captain of attack transport ship APA-22, nicknamed "Belinda". Attack transports are the size of battleships and have artillery to defend themselves, but their main duty is to deliver landing craft ashore in enemy territory. Think of the opening scene in "Saving Private Ryan", where the rectangular watercraft are hitting the beach at Normandy. The gates drop and adrenalized troops pour out to begin the invasion. Well, those boats are carried in by the attack transport ship, and in the movie, Captain Chandler and his crew are stationed in Pearl Harbor - after December 7, 1941 - training to enter the war in the Pacific. The "Belinda" is a brand new ship, it's welds still settling, and Chandler is a determined taskmaster, set on whipping his sailors into shape until they are the best drilled APA crew in the Navy.
Most of the film is devoted to this preparation, and the first 75 minutes alternates between the crew practicing boat "drops" (hence the movie's title), and the more casual aspects of life aboard such a ship, and Navy life in general. Different character types are presented, Hollywood Style, such as the hayseed garbage grinder (yes, there is such a job), the college football hero turned junior officer, and the pretty boy CEO, straight out of Annapolis but with no combat experience. Minor rivalries are developed to pad out the drama, but the first 3/4ths of the film has no combat and is really more akin to the big dramatic set-ups you see in major war films like "From Here To Eternity". Character development is what's happening, between Jeff Chandler (who had true star quality), his crew of misfits (who become top sailors), and the ship itself, which will develop a heroic personality of it's own.
The cast is terrific; besides Chandler (who tragically died young, you should IMDB him), you've got George Nader as his loyal Lieutenant, Richard Boone as the chief engineer, Lex Barker (aka Tarzan) as the CEO, noir tough guy Charles McGraw as a Marine lieutenant, Jock Mahoney (another Tarzan) as a sharpshooter, Julie Adams (of "Creature from the Black Lagoon" fame) as Nader's wife, and even Clint Freakin' Eastwood in a "blink and you'll miss him" scene near the end.
The last half hour is where all the buildup will pay off - and big time - as the Belinda finally sets out to sea and comes under immediate attack by waves of Japanese Kamikazes. This is expertly staged by director Joseph Pevney and his special effects team, whose work is state-of-the-art not only for 1956, but looks as good as anything up to the 1990s. The suicide planes come right at the Belinda, and you can feel yourself in Jeff Chandler's shoes as they close in.
Though it has more drama than combat, "Away All Boats" still rates as a classic Big Studio War Movie, and I'm gonna give it Two Big Thumbs Up accordingly. Filmed in Technicolor, it's a sweeping sea epic. /////
And I'm thinking that we might as well join the Navy and be done with it, because :
Wow! Now that's how you do a Submarine Movie. After getting a partial fix with "The Spy in Black", my appetite was whetted for a full-strength undersea submersion, and I found it the previous night in the declaratively titled "We Dive at Dawn"(1943), starring Sir John Mills as the captain of a Royal Navy submarine, searching the waters of the Baltic for a new and deadly German battleship. He and his crew are about to go on a seven day leave as the movie opens, and most are thrilled for the pass. Two, however, would just as soon stay on the boat. One sailor has a wife who plans to leave him and another has a wedding imminent but has come down with cold feet. As in "Away All Boats", these domestic dramas will serve as character developing plot devices and will take up the first third of the 92 minute film, but will not drag it down.
John Mills, a legendary English actor who was Knighted in 1976, is so authentic as "Captain Taylor" that you'll find yourself ready to jump at his every command. And is there anyplace on Earth where you've gotta be as "on your toes" as in the clautrophobic confines of a submarine, crammed full of switches and levers and screens and meters and pumps and engines and loading tubes? The actors operate every piece of machinery with the same accuracy, and you wonder if director Anthony Asquith had them train with or observe an actual sub crew at work. The chase for the German "Brandenburg" goes so far afield that Mills and co. are in danger of running out of fuel, but like Capt. Ahab, he won't give up. Mills isn't reckless, however, and has a plan to get his sub back to port, but it will involve waiting in silence after the attack for a German convoy to pass, as their oxygen runs low and the inevitable retaliatory depth charge strike commences. The tension will ratchet up with each explosion.
Co-starring with Mills is another familiar English actor, Eric Portman, a man with a strong face whom I'm sure you'll recognise from other UK films. He usually played serious-minded hero types and does so here, as the sonar operator who volunteers for a solo commando mission into a dock in Denmark, where in the black of night he will row ashore to locate a fuel depot. By now the sub needs oil as well as petrol, and Portman will be on dangerous turf because the port is littered with German troops and their trusty machine gun bunkers. Here's where the marital dramas at the beginning come in handy: Portman's character was the one who got a Dear John letter before the sub left home. His wife is leaving him, the news has eaten away at him all during the mission but has never affected his job performance. Still, with their sub in trouble and only one way out, he doesn't care if he lives or dies (telling Mills "no one will miss me") and thus steps forward when the crucial night mission presents itself.
Will he be successful in saving the sub? You'll be biting your nails to find out, in one of the best finales to maybe the best Submarine Movie we've ever seen. "We Dive At Dawn" is a must-see classic, rating "Two Huge Thumbs Up" from your Captain here at the blog. One final word about Anthony Asquith, he's a director whose name I've seen attached to many British films, and we've seen a couple over the years, including "The Browning Version" and "Way To The Stars", but I've never before thought to look him up. Turns out he was the son of the British Prime Minister H.H. Asquith (1908-1916), and had quite a fascinating life. It's worth IMDB-ing to read about. ////
That's all for now. I'm gonna head up to either Aliso or Santa Susana for my first hike in a while, so have an awesome day and we'll watch a movie tonight. Tons of love as always! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo
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