A big hit in the US, contributing to the British delusion that its industry could regularly match Hollywood. Noel Coward is a little odd at times as a naval captain - it does it in clipped unemotional tones which means the audience can project. But it can also be effective when his ship is blown up and Coward is covered in oil bobbing around in the ocean.
Mountbatten was a very ineffective officer in World War Two and afterwards - his career is littered with failure, death and destruction - but it is interesting to see a film based on a ship that sunk, not a great victory. It feels more true and I think that's what audiences responded to - the adversity.
The flashback device works well. The ship sinks and we cut back to the lives of its sailors. There's a little bit of Coward and his posh wife Celia Johnson, their kids (to whom he seems monumentally uninterested) and servant. There's also some cheerful lower orders, including John Mills. There's a young officer, Michael Wilding, plus Bernard Miles.
You can mock it especially the Coward-Johnson scenes - like when the maid comes in and finds out Coward's alive. The lower orders tug their forelocks.
But it has immediacy and authenticity. These people lived and these things happened. And it's about defeat, a perservering - Dunkirk, Norway, Crete. There's no victory, just survival. There's not too much Coward, plenty of time goes to others (Richard Attenborough in a star turn a a coward, Mills shines as a "good bloke" a persona that would take him to the top). And some scenes pack a wallop like the three girls at home having bomb fall on their head. The film got better as it went on. A tribute to the British industry.
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