Movies - The Cruel Sea

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	Movies - The Cruel Sea

The Cruel Sea (1953), a Michael Balcon production out of Ealing Studios, directed by Charles Frend, was a British film starring Jack Hawkins and Donald Sinden, in his first film, with Denholm Elliott, Stanley Baker, Virginia McKenna and Moira Lister. It was based on the monumental bestseller The Cruel Sea (book) of the same name by Nicholas Monsarrat. Screenplay, omitting some of Monsarrat's grimmest images, was by Eric Ambler. One of the special features of the film was that despite the sales of Monsarrat's novels, no concessions were made to sales in the USA. To see how a lower circulation novel on the same theme by a different author could be turned into an almost equally popular film see how, in the novel "The Enemy Below", a British commander becomes an American played by Robert Mitchum starring opposite Curd Jürgens' U-boat captain.

"The Cruel Sea" is a classic war film about the Royal Navy during World War II. The ships of the film were HMS Compass Rose, bearing pennant K49, and HMS Saltash Castle. In the film, Compass Rose is portrayed by the Flower Class Corvette HMS Coreopsis (K32), which had been loaned to the Hellenic Navy and re-named Kriezis . George Perry in his essential book about Ealing Studios writes that "The Admiralty, while anxious to co-operate in the making of the film, had got rid of all its wartime corvettes ... Eventually one was located in Malta - the Coreopsis of the Flower Class - which had been loaned to the Greek navy and was now awaiting a tow back to England and the breaker's yard. A naval captain with war service in such vessels, Captain Broome, was dispatched to inspect and report, and he arranged for some repairs before sailing it back to Plymouth..." The second starring ship in the film is HMS Saltash Castle, played by a Castle Class corvette, HMS Porchester Castle (pennant F362 as in the film)..

The action commences in 1939. Lieutenant Commander George Erickson, after service in the Merchant Navy, is recalled to the Royal Navy and given command of HMS Compass Rose, a newly-built Flower Class corvette intended for convoy escort duties. His officers (as in the book) are mostly newly-commissioned without experience at sea.

Despite these initial disadvantages, the ship and crew work up a routine and gain experience. The junior officers mature and the crew cross the Atlantic many times on escort duty. They are nearly sunk several times and eventually, they are torpedoed and forced to abandon ship. Ericson survives this ordeal, but most of the crew do not.

Together with his now-promoted First Officer, Lockhart, Erickson takes command of a new ship, HMS Saltash Castle and they continue the monotonous but vital duty of convoy escort. They capture one German submarine.

As the war ends, the ship is shown returning to port, as a guard to several German submarines that have surrendered.

The film captures most of the plot of the story, including the constant danger, the privation, the boredom, the grim humour of the sailors in time of war, and the women who are left behind. Filmed hardly 7 years after the end of WW2, "The Cruel Sea" does not give all of the detail of the book - for example, Monsarrat's account of a chain of grinning skeletons floating in their roped together life jackets - but Eric Ambler's screenplay, the actors' portrayals and Charles Frend's direction convey the atmosphere of The Cruel Sea, as does Michael Balcon's success in keeping the film wholly British.

Monsarrat drew on his experience as an RNVR escort commander, and the experiences of many similar men. A typical commander of Ericson's type is described in a Wikipedia article on Denys Rayner, who, though an RNVR officer to George Ericson's ex-merchant navy man, graduated from a trawler at the start of the war, to a corvette, to a small destroyer - HMS Warwick - in which he was torpedoed and survived depth charging while swimming away from her undertow, to command of an escort group. (Reference: Captain S.W.Roskill's Foreword to D.A.Rayner's "Escort: The Battle of the Atlantic" Kimber:London (1955))

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