This is the last of the famous Hitchcocks that I hadn't seen. I've seen plenty of more obscure ones but not this one, for some reason. I think I thought that having the whole film in one location would get tiresome. Jami also said that it was wartime propaganda and thus a bit preachy. But, whatever the reason, a bunch of Hitchcocks just dropped on the Criterion Channel and we watched it, and I'm glad. I would venture to say that it moved me more than any Hitchcock (with the possible exception of Sabotage, for reasons that you will understand if you've watched it). I go to Hitchcock for pure entertainment, and while they're often gripping, they don't often have unrelenting tension (he's no Henri-Georges Clouzot), but this one is absolutely tense. It's also much grittier than I expected, from the opening scene where all but Talulah Bankhead, who is the first, and at the beginning, sole occupant of the lifeboat, emerge absolutely filthy from the grease and oil that fills the water, a detail I'd never even considered but seems obvious now, to the people who die and the manner they do so.
First, the cast. The big name (see poster above) is Tallulah Bankhead, of whom I'd heard but whom I've not seen in anything before. (This is perhaps unsurprising - Wikipedia informs me that she hadn't been in a film since 1932's Faithless She's wonderful: a sultry smoker's voice, largely unflappable (until she isn't, partly worn down by the running joke of her losing everything of value to her over the course of the film, being left only with a comb), a jaded woman-of-the-world reporter, who says of every mentioned group of people "some of my best friends are..." I'd also heard of Hume Cronyn (wasn't he married to some famous actress? Ah yes, Jessica Tandy) who plays Stanley, the mild-mannered radioman (hence his nickname "Sparks") who's been sunk a few times before and who falls hard for the pretty nurse Alice, played by Mary Anderson, who at one point says she's glad the boat was sunk because she didn't want to return to London where the temptation of her married lover awaited (pretty astoundingly self-centered, given the loss of life, but still). After Bankhead's Connie Porter, the first person to clamber aboard is John Hodiak's Kovac, followed by Alice and Stanley dragging Gus Smith (William Bendix) who has shrapnel in his leg that Alice removes once they're on the boat. Gus was basically on the toilet when they were hit otherwise he would've been in a part of the boat from which none survived. His main claim to fame, however, is as a champion jitterbugger, along with his dance-mad girl Rosie, whom he is anxious to get back to New York to reunite with, before she is seduced by his dance rival who has an Armenian name. Perhaps you can guess what will happen to that shrapnel-hit leg. Next comes "Charcoal Joe" - the black steward whose real name is actually George (and the character of whom was a bone of contention to John Steinbeck, whom Hitchcock had write the story for the film - to quote Wikipedia: he contrasted the "stock comedy Negro" of the finished film when his story had a "Negro of dignity, purpose and personality" - this is a little unfair on the Joe of the film, whose actor, Canada Lee, was mainly a stage performer and the first actor cast, and who indeed carries himself with dignity and is largely treated as an equal by the others), who brings with him a young mother and her baby, and the complaint that the former had struggled mightily to get away from him and take both to a watery grave. Well, in the first real gut punch of the film, it turns out the baby is already dead, and the mother has "shell-shock" (she got it in England and was being treated on it in New York, where the baby was born, and was returning to re-unite with her husband). She doesn't last long either. There's also affable millionaire "Ritt" Rittenhouse (no relation of that Rittenhouse), whom Connie has palled around with on the boat.
Last, but definitely not least, is a German sailor from the U-Boat that sunk their ship but got taken out in the process. Connie, who speaks German, translates for him and he claims not to be the U-Boat captain. Kovacs is raring to dump him overboard but is outvoted. This is the first of the many discussions of What To Do about Willi the German that seem obvious stand-ins for conversations other European countries had about what to do about Hitler's Germany in the run-up to the war. Of course, it fairly quickly emerges that he was the U-Boat captain (it's Connie, one of his defenders, who works it out, and outs him by calling him "Kapitan" and eliciting an instinctive response). He also has other secrets, some of which could easily have been revealed by a thorough search, but we'll gloss over that detail. Kovacs never trusts him, and at first insists on plotting his own course for Bermuda that is different from the one Willi suggests (they don't have a compass to settle matters), but eventually caves. Then there are storms, Gus's condition worsens (good thing Willi was a surgeon in his civilian life), ocean currents drag them around, they lose their scanty food and water supplies, and Willi turns the tables on them in a time of crisis, proving to be an inexhaustible rower. However, things end in a scene of somewhat shocking savagery, at least shortly before they encounter a German supply ship, which itself shortly comes under fire. Kovacs and Connie bicker, she, teasing him about his many conquests immortalized in tattoo, he about her callous regard for her (quickly lost) film coverage of the sinking over the lives that were lost and her flashy wealth (although it transpires they have more in common than he knows). Kovacs keeps beating Ritt at poker with the cards he makes out of one of Connie's notepads until Ritt has the perfect hand... Alice and Stanley fall in love. Joe has little to do but play the tin whistle (and occasionally display the light-fingered talents his religion is driving him to leave in the past) and Gus goes steadily ga ga in the blazing post-storm heat. And not once did I wish that there were more locations. In fact, I'm not sure how Hitchcock did it: you don't necessarily believe you're actually in a boat in the middle of the sea, but the "boat" does rock very convincingly, and everyone's clothes get more wrinkled and tatty, the men grow beards, the women's makeup disappears (and Alice gets alarmingly sunburned)... As I said, gritty. Don't leave it as long as I did to check it out.
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