Posted on 07/18/2023 7:22:35 AM PDT by Chainmail
Battle of Algiers is the greatest war movie ever made.
No other movie has ever affected me that way.
Great film.
I finally read the book by Nicolas Monsarrat and even though that book is excellent - based on his own experiences on corvettes in combat - it was a hard read because he illuminated and dwelled on the horrific injuries and death throughout his story (something I tried to avoid in my book because your reader gets worn out, reading about endless shocking events). The movie's writer, Eric Ambler crafted a crisper, more concise narrative and the casting was perfect.
I was able to verify that they not only used a genuine Flower Class Corvette in the film, but also took her to sea in a notoriously rough part of the English Channel to film the bad weather scenes. They did fire that 4 inch gun with live ammo (narrowly missing a civilian freighter in the process!) but they also dropped live depth charges too!
I can't imagine Hollywood ever putting that much effort and risk into authenticity in a movie (or their insurance companies allowing it).
My favorite part though, is Jack Hawkins' portrayal of a combat commander: he nails the difficulty, the responsibility, and the emotions of command better than any other movie has ever done. It really is the only movie like it.
I agree about the portrayal of the inherent weight of command. The part where he told his XO that he wasn’t doing well, and had tears running down his face was remarkable.
Later in that same scene,when he passed out and his XO had to put him to bed, that really hit me. The tenderness and complete respect he showed his Captain after he had passed out (as he rearranged him in his office chair) was strikingly well done. Men can and do develop a sense of extreme respect and even a familial love for those they serve with, most especially towards those men who have shown real leadership. I think it was portrayed best by E.B. Sledge in his famous “With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa” where his CO, A.A. Haldane an officer who had the top to bottom respect of everyone, and even love from his men because of his stellar leadership, was killed. The emotional devastation of the loss was palpable in the reading.
The wartime movies and books that have stood out for me are those that directly deal with this head on. One of my favorites in this respect is the book “Once An Eagle” by Anton Myrer. Another is “The Caine Mutiny” which if watched in the appropriate light, is less a story of a mutiny than it is a story of leadership. I view “Twelve O’Clock High” in that same light, and one of the most powerful scenes in that movie, when Colonel Savage cracks under the pressure, and when he recovers, his assistant puts him to bed, taking off his boots, covering him with a blanket, and doing it in a way that shows how much he respects and even loves the man, recognizing what he sacrificed to bring them all to that point, almost on his sheer force of will.
I also enjoyed the portrayal of the role of the XO, coming aboard as just another one of the junior officers and being thrust into a leadership role due to the incapacity of the original 1st Lieutenant. In real life you see that, people who just seem ready-made for responsibility, accepting it as circumstances require it, and excelling at it.
Which also brings another character to mind, even though in the end, he plays a bit-part. The original 1st Lieutenant. He deserves a shout out for his acting ability and portrayal. Anyone who as ever served in a hierarchy has seen people like the original 1st Lieutenant. Someone who was enamored of his own role and power, and spends all his time using his power and position as a hammer to pound down nails whether they need pounding or not. He was a bully. And no bully ever commanded respect.
In the aforementioned book “Once An Eagle”, the protagonist, Sam Damon, goes on leave with his wife to “her crowd” which is the upper crust of society. If you read the book, you may recall he was having drinks with all the men who viewed themselves as “Captains of Industry”, and his wife’s father invited him (to the derisive scornful humor of the other men) to see if he could, using his wartime experience with logistics, straighten out his warehouse and inventory problems. When he went in, he encountered a bully running the stockyard who was exactly the same kind of person as the Compass Rose’s original 1st Lieutenant. He had his little fiefdom, he had his little sphere of power, and was determined he wasn’t going to surrender any of that to anyone. Damon figures out immediately how things are (since being in combat allowed him to size up people rapidly and either get them out o the way or find out how to make them work for him) and immediately subjugates the guy by demonstrating to him, and everyone around him, that for the next few weeks, Sam Damon is going to be in charge. I always thought that scene was brilliantly done.
In this movie, there were two related scenes that impressed me with their symmetry.
The first, when the 1st Lieutenant reams out the two young officers, telling him it was their job to find him and tell him they were ready, no his job to find them. Then, when the 1st Lieutenant chews out the young officer on the bridge, and gets called down via voice tube to the Captain’s quarters, where the Captain asks him if the ship is ready to go to sea and is told “Any time you are ready”, then gets chewed out for not actively seeking him out and directly informing him of that, then follows it up with another dressing down when he asks him if the crew was onboard and gets the unsatisfactory response “I think so”. When he says he will detail someone to find out, the Captain, in case he hadn’t hammered home the point of his dissatisfaction thoroughly enough, snapped “You won’t detail anyone unless you want to change jobs with them!”
In a flash, the Captain removed the self-administered illusion of power the XO had in his own mind by removing his choice to delegate, always an unmistakable rebuke to a subordinate, effectively saying “You didn’t do your job, so to satisfy me, under my orders, are going to perform that job yourself you damn well should have delegated and ensured it was carried out.”
The contrast between those two scenes of the XO chewing out the confused and cowed young officers, and the Captain chewing out the 1st Lieutenant for much the same thing was apparent to me.
That was all a classic scene, but it was apparent to me that the Captain already had the measure of his XO at that point and I wondered if he had heard him chewing out the officer on the bridge via the voice tube, and decided to start putting him in his place. The scene where they were having a meal in the wardroom, and the XO had to leave because of his ulcer flareup, was well written. After the XO leaves the table, the junior officers are all grinning and snickering, and the Captain has to ask what is so funny, then fully realizes it is disrespect, aimed at his second in command that is causing the derisive humor, and you can see it on his face. Right then and there, he realizes he has a problem that will have to be addressed. But then fate comes into play and fells the XO, and takes the problem out of his hands.
The Captain knows that a situation like that, a highly disliked and disrespected officer as XO, can cause a lot of problems in a crew. He was also discomfited that the junior officers didn’t seem to feel the need to hide their contempt and disrespect from their Captain in his direct presence...a bad sign. At least that is how I read it.
Funny, my only quibble with the movie, it is a quibble with nearly every naval movie I have ever seen, is the filming with ship models. It almost never works for me. The best they can do is try to use a vessel from that era and do live filming, but that is pretty rare they pull it off, and usually, that doesn’t work. I watched a movie some years ago “The Thin Red Line” which I didn’t find particularly impressive, probably for the sole reason that when they showed what should have been a WWII era destroyer in the water, they showed a Spruance Class destroyer, and it ruined the illusion for me. Same for the older “Midway” movie using repainted AT-5 Texans as Japanese Zeros and Essex class carriers, albeit in their modern configuration. I just could never make that suspension of belief that is critical to being able to fully enjoy a movie like that.
This all changed with the movie “Titanic”, when CGI began to really show its chops. Now, I have zero doubt if someone were to make a movie about a naval battle like Leyte Gulf, they could do so nearly realistically with both planes and ships by leveraging CGI.
That said, I have never been more impressed, and had my opinion upgraded so dramatically after a second viewing of a movie as I was when I rewatched
“The Cruel Sea”.
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