The Cruel Sea

With many remarkable virtues, the screen version of Nicholas Montsarrat's novel proves that British films can overstate their famous technique of understatement. Depicting five years of war on board a British corvette escorting conveys, the Cruel Sea dampens even highly dramatic episodes with a monotonous restraint that rarely varies the emotional pitch of the film. Only in the flaw less performance of Jack Hawkins as the captain of an inexperienced crew is there a gauge of the intensity of each experience. In spite of Hawkins, the two hour film often seems as endless as the ocean which hides the subs the corvette seeks.

The brief narration which opens the film, introducing the sea as the villain, forecasts an epic. What follows, however, is a sprawling documentary, tedious in its length and disinterest in character, but at the same time impressive in picturing the danger and frustration of the corvette's task. With several delicate director's touches The Cruel Sea communicates the breathless silence of perilous halts in mid-ocean for rescues or repairs, and there are two scenes remarkable for stark visual impact-the sinking of H.M.S. Compass Rose, and the running down of floating survivors in a vain attempt to destroy a U-boat. Impressive also is the film's attention to detail; the viewer becomes completely familiar with the Compass Rose, the radar screen on the bridge, the pistons in the engine room, and he begins to listen himself for the sonar pings that warn of a nearby U-boat.

With a less constant tempo, with some cutting, particularly in the extraneous and overly familiar episodes on shore-the wartime romance, the seaman's return to his bombed home, his faithless wife-The Cruel Sea would have been far more effective. As it is, the audience may be tempted after two hours to agree with the Captain when he says at the end of the film; "Two U-boats in five years. That's not very much, is it? R. E. OLDENBURG