Artivels Undescribable Perfection

Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Derrick Gibbons An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Allison Davies The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

JohnHowardReid A Gainsborough Picture, made at Gaumont British Studios, Shepherd's Bush. Neither copyrighted nor theatrically released in the U.S.A. Released in the U.K. through General Film Distributors: 28 June 1943. Presented by J. Arthur Rank. London opening at the Odeon, Leicester Square: 20 May 1943. Australian release through 20th Century-Fox: 7 September 1944 (sic). 8,557 feet. 95 minutes. (NTSC available on a VCI DVD; PAL available on a Simply Media DVD or an ITV Silver Collection disc). SYNOPSIS: A British submarine receives orders to sink a Nazi battleship. NOTES: Made with the co-operation of the Admiralty and the officers and men of His Majesty's submarines. The Navy did not think the original Williams-Valentine script "sufficiently authentic", so Launder was engaged. He revised the script with the help of an experienced submarine officer.COMMENT: No greater contrast can be found than that between the war- time propaganda movies made by England and the USA. The Hollywood product is full of false heroics and exaggeratedly racist bravado ("One of us is worth ten of them"), glamorized action and an enormous amount of dame-chasing on leave. The British movies are soberly realistic to a fault (you actually go away from "We Dive At Dawn" with more than a passing knowledge of the interior workings of a submarine); little attempt is made to glamorize war and give it a glossy sheen of high adventure (although there is plenty of tension, war is usually shown in all its horror and futility and mindless waste); whilst the Germans are invariably presented as lacking the quick wits of the English, they are still a force to be taken extremely seriously; and leaves are usually spent quietly with families in environs far removed from high- stepping night clubs.On the other hand, both American and British war pictures usually devote a great deal of their screen time to filling in the characters of a select group of officers and men. Whilst the Hollywood writers often fall back on stereotypes and stock characters, their British counterparts are more successful in presenting a diverse and more interesting range of personnel. The English have never been afraid of eccentrics and non-conformists, whereas to an American scriptwriter, any character who doesn't conform simply has to redeem himself by some heroic act in the final reel. The British certainly believe in team spirit, but the Americans demand total subjection to predetermined rules of conduct."We Dive At Dawn" is an excellent example of the British school. Well-rounded, interesting characters are soberly, and realistically acted by a large group of fine players with whom we can sympathize and identify. A great deal of the action is fascinatingly concerned with the details of submarine command. And the film has been put together with admirable competence and professionalism but without overt flashiness or unrealistic special effects. Asmittedly, "We Dive at Dawn" takes a fair while to get cracking, what with all the boat-side camaraderie as the various characters are introduced. In these early sections of the film we feel too that the two star performances, Portman (top-billed, though his is the subsidiary role) and Mills are somewhat lacking in depth. In fact they both seem too brusque to be totally convincing. However, Mills and Portman do settle down and grow as the story progresses. And some of the other below-decks business, particularly the running gag with the Arabella tattoo, also becomes more enthralling and/or amusing. Of curse, once the action really starts, with its surprising semi- documentary insistence on all the details and actual mechanics of the attack, this movie achieves a realism, a verisimilitude, a naturalistic tautness and tension worthy of Asquith's best work. Even Jack Cox's drab, gray-toned lighting photography comes into its own. Topped by an all-action climax.

James Smith After watching American Sniper and being so disappointed, I needed a war film fix. I needed to watch a realistic war movie portraying real characters and real challenges.To do so I had to watch a movie made over 70 years ago on a shoe string budget during war time called We Dive At Dawn. Don't get me wrong - I could have watched Generation Kill or Band of Brothers, but I decided to go with a classic British war film. If only today's 'try to be directors' with their enormous budgets would learn from these classics, movies like The Hurt Locker and American Sniper may actually have been good.Next on my viewing list is The Cruel Sea.

Robert J. Maxwell Anthony Asquith directed this relatively inexpensive and thoroughly adequate war-time thriller about a British submarine hunting a new German battleship, the fictional Brandenburg.The structure is episodic. (1) Vignettes of the crew ashore, variously courting young women, trying to avoid marrying them, and suspicious of their wives. (2) Emergency mission: Sink the Brandenburg, which is a difficult task requiring skill on the part of the crew and the captain, John Mills. (3) The pursuit the enemy ship beyond the submarine's range. (4) The attack, and the depth charges that follow. (5) A landing party hijacking some fuel from a ship in a remote German port, involving a fire fight. (6) A brief scene of the return home and a resolution of earlier issues.It's probably different from the submarine movies you may have gotten used to. Ordinarily, the skipper turns his cap around, glues his eyes to the periscope, hollers out "bearing" and "mark", and everything proceeds smoothly. Here, Mills has a hell of a time lining up for a torpedo attack. The boat bobs up and down. He has trouble deciding the "angle on the bow" because the Brandenburg is, after all, not steering a straight course. And Mills is quick to snap out remonstrations to his officers when his efforts are frustrated.I don't know why some Americans had trouble deciphering the different accents. A "child" becomes a "chow." Simple. And an imprecation is an imprecation in any language, even if it comes out, "Cor bloimey!" It's the adverts on British roads that always confounded me. "Pom pom mums." And, "Lose a stone in a fortnight." Why would anyone want to lose one of his stones? Aspiring screenwriters nota Bene: Every submarine movie must have a scene in which the skipper must try to convince the attacking enemy that it has been destroyed. The skipper does it by sending up oil and then debris, in that order. To make the rule REALLY convincing, they may stick a dead body in the torpedo tube before shooting it out. That's what Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster did in "Run Silent, Run Deep," but John Mills did it here first.If it's not a classic of its kind, it's entertaining and at times pretty tense. Not a bad job.

marxi ***************************MILD SPOILERS AHEAD**************************We Dive at Dawn is an English made movie with John Mills in the lead role. The second time I watched the DVD version was on a big screen TV and I must say the movie is better than I thought the first time I saw it on the samll screen. May be it was the big screen viewing that helped?I still say the first few segments of the movie are muddled, but once the submarine leaves the dock and begins its mission, the movie takes off too! The search for the German battleship named the Brandenburg and the adventures which went along with it were absorbing and the detail shown in the movie are interesting!I'm increasing my rating to 7/10. If you enjoy WW II films, I think you'll find this one interesting once the submarine gets underway. Some of the men on the sub have quite a sense of humor, too!