The Sea Shall Not Have Them *** (1954, Dirk Bogarde, Michael Redgrave, Anthony Steel, Nigel Patrick, Bonar Colleano, Jack Watling) – Classic Movie Review 7317

Co-writer/ director Lewis Gilbert’s commendably stiff-lipped 1954 British black and white film drama The Sea Shall Not Have Them is based on the 1953 novel by John Harris, with a screenplay by Lewis Gilbert and Vernon Harris.

It tells the story about four British wartime plane-crash survivors, Flight Sergeant Mackay, Air Commodore Waltby, as Sergeant Kirby and Flying Officer Harding (Dirk Bogarde, Michael Redgrave, Bonar Colleano and Jack Watling), ditched in the North Sea and waiting in a dinghy to be rescued. The twist is that one of them is a foreign agent with secret German plans.

The Sea Shall Not Have Them is a fair, tense, honourable drama focusing on the RAF’s Air Sea Rescue Units, and it is very decently acted by an excellent cast, with Gilbert proving his usual sympathetic way with actors. Anthony Steel and Nigel Patrick also star as Flying Officer Treherne and Flight Sergeant Singsby, the leader of the rescue crew, battling bad weather, mechanical problems and a fire in the galley.

Also in the cast are James Kenney, Sydney Tafler, George Rose, Griffith Jones, Guy Middleton, Ian Whittaker, Paul Carpenter, George Rose, Victor Maddern, Eddie Byrne, Anton Diffring, Ann Gudrun [Gudrun Ure], Rachel Kempson, Joan Sims, Michael Balfour, Nigel Green, Glyn Houston, Moultrie Kelsall, Jack Lambert, Michael Ripper, Graham Stark and Jack Taylor.

Tafler was the brother-in-law of Gilbert, who also cast him in Reach for the Sky (1956), Sink the Bismarck! (1960) and The Spy Who Loved Me (1977).

The soundtrack is by composer Malcolm Arnold. Gilbert writes the screenplay with Vernon Harris.

The Sea Shall Not Have Them runs 91 minutes, is made by Angel Productions, is released by Eros Films (UK) and United Artists (US), is produced by Daniel M Angel and Anthony Nelson-Keys, is shot black and white by Stephen Dade, is designed by Bernard Robinson and George R Busby, and is edited by Russell Lloyd.

The title is the motto of the RAF’s Directorate of Air Sea Rescue, created on 6 February 1941, later known as the RAF Search and Rescue Force. The Force supported search and rescue over the UK till 4 October 2015 when civilian contractor Bristow took over.

Maliciously witty Nöel Coward saw the Leicester Square Odeon’s sign advertising ‘Michael Redgrave and Dirk Bogarde in The Sea Shall Not Have Them’ and is supposed to have said, “I don’t see why not. Everyone else has.’

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7317

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