A film best remembered today for Noel Coward's famous one liner about seeing a poster advertising Michael Redgrave and Dirk Bogarde in the film - "I don't see why not, everyone else has." The title is silly (how often do yo used the word "shall" used in a title?), but at least it's got a fresh angle, focusing on a sea rescue service.
The plot involves four Britons who crash in the ocean - Redgrave, Bogarde, resident American Bonar Colleano (called "Canada" just so we know where he's from), and Jack Watling - and wait to be rescued by a ship led by Anthony Steel and Nigel Patrick. When you realise that this film doesn't star John Mills, John Gregson, Jack Hawkins, Richard Todd, Kenneth More or Alec Guiness, you realise just how many stars in uniform were working on the sound stages of British cinema in the 1950s.
There's not a lot of plot twists, it's just the rescue is a bit more difficult than they first think: it rains, a rescue ship breaks down, there's a fire on board, the survivors run out of food, it's cold. The result is that the story feels as though it drags on. Basically it's four people in a raft, and others come to pick them up. Redgrave has to deliver some top secret documents, Bogarde gives a long monologue in a lower class accent (this was the year of Doctor in the House, he wasn't a big star yet), some women fret, the rescuers squabble, there's no one real hero... that's about it.
The highlight is probably the incorporation of documentary footage and occasionally the action seems realistic - conking heads on ceilings, shivering, knocking things over, etc.
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