The first screen version of C.S. Forster's excellent novel is a little creaky. More faithful than Sailor to the King it nonetheless doesn't quite capture the book's magic. The opening sequence is there, slightly hampered by Betty Balfour's slightly manic performance as mother and Barry MacKay's wet work as the sailor (the character is a lightweight in the book but does he have to be wet?).
John Mills is fine as Brown - he's got an everyman quality that the role requires - and Jimmy Lyndon ideal as Ginger.
The film is less harsh than the book - MacKay not as motivated by ambition, Brown's heroism is recognised at the end instead of being destined to be not known.
Surprisingly the attack only takes up 25 minutes of screen time - it doesn't get going til 45 minutes in. I think Walter Forde wasn't a great visual director. Imagine if someone like Hitchcock or Michael Powell had done it. The film never really makes it clear what Brown is doing, or how he got to hang out, and misses some key action stuff like Brown shifting his position overnight, and the German strategy.
Instead the running time is padded out with shots of training for sailors and footage of British ships (this had official naval co operation), a boxing game with some Germans.
I did always remember one things about this movie - the fact the officers of each ship know and tell the enemy there was nothing they could have done in the battle because the ships were bigger, i.e the German tells Brown that there was nothing they could have done because the German had the bigger ship and at the end the Britisher tells the German there was nothing he could have done because he had the bigger ship. Such matter of fact honesty is rare in American war films.
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