We Dive at Dawn **** (1943, John Mills, Eric Portman, Reginald Purdell, Niall MacGinnis, Joan Hopkins, Josephine Wilson, Jack Watling) – Classic Movie Review 6640

Director Anthony Asquith’s excellent 1943 tale of wartime life at home (a brief shore leave) and at sea for a British submarine crew on the HMS Sea Tiger stars John Mills as the skipper, Captain Freddie Taylor, and Eric Portman as a sour Yorkshire rating, James Hobson, bitter that his wife (Josephine Wilson) has walked out on him. Leave is cancelled so the submarine can chase and hopefully destroy a new German warship called the Brandenburg.

The gripping screenplay by J B Williams, Val Valentine and Frank Launder concentrates on character and realistic situations rather than action (the submarine has to negotiate a minefield and runs out of fuel to get home on its shrouded mission to sink the German battleship) and, unusually, succeeds in avoiding easy stereotypes and clichés.

There is involving acting by the stalwart British actors and inspired direction by Asquith in what can be called the British version of Das Boot of its day.

Also in the cast are Reginald Purdell, Niall MacGinnis Joan Hopkins, Jack Watling, Leslie Weston, Louis Bradfield, Ronald Millar, Norman Williams, David Peel, Philip Godfrey, John Slater, Beatrice Varley, Marie Ault, John Salew, Philip Friend, Merle Tottenham, Caven Watson, Lionel Grose, Robert [Robb] Wilton, Frederick Burtwell, character actor Ian Fleming, Brian Powley, Ian Wilson and Molly Johnson.

We Dive at Dawn runs 98 minutes, is a Gainsborough film, written by J B Williams, Val Valentine and Frank Launder, shot in black and white by Jack E Cox, produced by Edward Black and scored by Louis Levy.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 6640

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