The Sea Shall Not Have Them [VHS] [1955]

Buy The Sea Shall Not Have Them [VHS] [1955]: Nigel Patrick,Dirk Bogarde,Bonar Colleano,Anthony Steel,Michael Redgrave,

Buy The Sea Shall Not Have Them [VHS] [1955] Now

4 Front Video

Release date: Monday 11th of May 1998

Starring: Nigel Patrick, Dirk Bogarde, Bonar Colleano, Anthony Steel, Michael Redgrave, £5.99
A Vanished Era
Review date: 2010-06-23 Rating: 8 out of 10

Made in 1954, this was one of the stream of war films that poured out of British studios after the end of WW2 (Appointment in London 1952, The Malta Story 1953, Above Us The Waves and the Dambusters both 1955) while the hardware was still available and memories of the real thing were fresh.
Briefly, the plot is this - British aircraft carrying officer with top secret documents is shot down into the North Sea. A launch is sent to rescue them, but breaks down en route. Everyone spends a night wallowing around in the freezing water until the boat is repaired, the RAF boys rescued and all is right with the world in the end. We won, after all.
Like most such films it contained the usual suspects - the gruff but kindly senior N.C.O. (Nigel Patrick in no-nonsense gercha mode), the nice middle-class junior officer (Anthony Steele) and a whole host of gor-blimey-Bill-it's-a-bagpiper A.B.s, Privates and AC2s of varying degrees of villainy, cowardice, incompetence and reluctant bravery. Dirk Bogarde does his shrill and hysterical turn (perfected a few years before in The Blue Lamp, 1950) as a WOPAG who doesn't cope well with stress - but then after a night in an open dinghy, swamped by the North Sea, I don't suppose I would either.
Probably the best turns come from two sources. Firstly, Michael Redgrave as the Boffin carrying the Top Secret briefcase (a MacGuffin about German V3 rockets). Redgrave was a wonderful screen actor, and it never ceases to amaze me why he wasn't used more by the big studios (he featured in over 50 films, but most of them were eminently forgettable). Here he turns in a sensitive, under-played performance typical of the kind that, once seen, is hard to forget (vide The Captive Heart, 1944, Dead of Night, 1945). Particularly effective, even touching, is the scene he plays with Bogarde in the dinghy, both by this time drenched and frozen, where each discovers that they come from the same town and probably know each other's fathers. It's a beautiful sequence, played note-perfectly by both actors, but with Redgrave's gentle warmth practically glowing off the screen.
The second, scarcely-ever-noticed performance that, I think, says much more than it seems to, comes from a little-known character actor called Guy Middleton. He plays Squadron Leader Scott, who is based at the station that Bogarde's aircaft is missing from. However, though he looks the part - smart uniform with cap at a jaunty angle, handle-bar moustache and wizzard-prang accent - he is far from the racy, heroic figure that the phrase "R.A.F. Squadron Leader" would normally conjure up. The all-important R.A.F. pilot's "Wings" are missing from his uniform. He is a non-flying ground officer, a "penguin", whose main role seems to be organising station entertainments, pestering the Station Commander with questions about same, and generally getting in everyone's way (how he ever got to be a Squadron Leader is something of a mystery). At one point, trying to do the Right Thing, he reassures the girlfriend (a station WAAF) of one of the missing plane's crew that he (the boyfriend) is all right and will soon be home, whereas the truth is that they are still missing and unofficially believed killed. The truth of his well-meant deception comes out, the girl is even more upset than she was before, and he earns even more withering contempt from the C.O. than he has already received.
Yet you can see that, in his heart of hearts, he means well and wishes that he could be one of the heroes who set out every day to bomb the Nazis into submission. He knows that everyone despises him and that even the Other Ranks treat him with barely-veiled contempt. And yet he is doing his small best with what he has, which isn't much. It is a heroic, unsung performance from a fine character actor who, like Redgrave, was used far less than he might have been.
There are other nice little touches that wouldn't mean much to most people. The boat sent to search for the downed crew is an R.A.F. rescue launch, a boat manned by airmen; but the aircraft sent out to help in the search, a Supermarine Sea Otter, is a Royal Navy aircraft, crewed by sailors. Crazy or what?
It is hard to take films like this seriously in an era which has seen countless mickey-takes by the likes of TW3, Monty Python and Armstrong and Miller (not to mention the truly dreadful "Piece of Cake" series). Yet what seem now to be caricatures and pastiches probably reflected, to a great extent, how people saw themselves and others back then, in an era when the greatest conflict in human history was still a current memory for anyone old enough to have seen the film when it was first released. If you ever see this film, try and remember that, and treat it with respect.

Similar Products