Nowadays we’re likely to credit this as “directed by David Lean and Noel Coward”, although in its day the credits had Coward first. Lean directed the action sequences, but it’s clear that the film is very much Coward’s Ñ no surprise, as he plays the lead and wrote it. No surprise, too, that, as a British film made in 1942, it plays principally as a propaganda piece, stiffening morale on the home front (wives and families play as important a role as the life aboard the destroyer that’s the subject of the film). Yet it still plays remarkably well, it’s even moving in places, with most of the film structured as a series of flashbacks remembered by some of the men as they cling to a raft after their destroyer has been sunk. But with one proviso: it’s really hard to get past the class assumptions (and the accents) that underlie the film. Coward plays his role as an upper-class paterfamilias of both ship and home. He’s a paternalistic, superior father-figure to his crew, who, as good members of the lower classes, cheer along enthusiastically. His clipped upper-class diction is doubtless meant to reflect a social authority, but in fact the emotional core of the film rests with the lower class characters played by (especially) John Mills and Bernard Miles. They steal the film away from Coward, in ways that I suspect were never part of his original concept.
by Ian Johnston | Source: ITV DVD
16 Apr 2009 12:29 AM | Submit Comment
