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If you're in the middle of a ferocious war and it's still not clear that you're going to come out on top, among the things you'll be concerned with is to keep up the morale of the civilians...to demonstrate that our troops have the bravery, the resourcefulness and the dedication to overcome all the odds in a noble cause. And that's just what director Anthony Asquith provided the British with 1943's naval war film, We Dive at Dawn. After more than 60 years, it's not surprising that some of the movie is dated. It doesn't help that the class stereotypes which help define the enlisted men from the officers can be jarring. Here, as in so many other British war films, the men invariably have thick regional working class accents while the officers speak with an educated fluency that would place them at home in England's finest ruling-class establishments. In this movie, Freddie Taylor (John Mills), the captain of the submarine Sea Tiger, is clever, confident, resourceful, aggressive, in control, good with his men, humorous with his peers, quick to make a decision. And it helps that he's lucky. His men are jolly tars, for the most part, competent at their jobs and always ready with a joke when things get tense. Although we spend the first third of the movie getting to know these people while they're on leave, after that things get tense quickly.
Taylor and his sub are ordered to destroy the Brandenburg, a new German battleship. They just miss the ship when it enters the Kiel Canal and heads into the Baltic. Taylor assesses the risks and decides the Sea Tiger will go after it, through mine fields, anti-sub nets and with a real risk of not having enough fuel to return to home base. After several tense situations, the confrontation takes place. The Sea Tiger lets loose six torpedoes but has to dive, not knowing if it had done its job. After a clever subterfuge, Taylor outfoxes a couple of German destroyers but then realizes there is not enough fuel. He plans to scuttle his sub and surrender when, just at the last moment, James Hobson (Eric Portman), a seaman who had been sullen and a loner and who speaks German, says there is a small Danish coastal village that had been a fuel depot. He thinks it might still be for the Germans. The last third of the movie is a rousing action sequence as the crew of the sub attempts to hold off the Germans long enough to pump in enough fuel to get the Sea Tiger back to Britain. This is a wartime propaganda movie, so don't expect failure. And did the Sea Tiger actually put the Brandenburg down? Are the men reunited with their wives and sweethearts? Did Hobson have a reconciliation with his wife and small son that left him smiling for once? Did Freddie Taylor finally have a chance to make use of all those female names in his little black book? You'll have to see the movie.
There are propaganda war movies and there are propaganda war movies. Some, like Powell's and Pressburger's One of Our Aircraft Is Missing and The 49th Parallel, still stand up to viewing today because the stories are solid and unexpected and the creators didn't use obvious shorthand clichés. Others, like We Dive at Dawn, were made with enough clichés that when watching we have to remind ourselves how dire the time was when the film was made. Still, Asquith can build a lot of suspense even with a few clichés. The Sea Tiger's forcing its way through a sub net was tense. The stalking of the Brandenburg and the plotting needed for the torpedo firing was realistic; John Mill's no-nonsense attitude while he prepared to attack was well-handled. The fake-out preparations to make the Sea Tiger look as if it had been destroyed by depth charges was as realistic, inside the sub as well as out, as you could hope for, and the battle for the fuel depot was dramatic and exciting. We Dive at Dawn is not a classic war film, but it's a well-made, well-acted example of its type and time.
John Mills, it's worth noting, had a long, long career. Especially in the Fifties he played in a number of serious-minded films looking back at those WWII days. He had the quality of showing grit, cheerfulness and perseverance, but of also being trustworthy, a man England could be proud of as he fought the war. Top-billed in this movie was Eric Portman, a fine actor with a unique voice and the ability to give stares so cold you'd want to put on a sweater. Everyone on the sub is very much in the joking but stiff-upper-lip mode, but Portman manages some complexity for his character. Mills and Portman did fine jobs working together on this film.


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