The Cruel Sea

**The Cruel Sea** is a pre-certed UK VHS released by EMI on 1980.

## Description

**From the novel by NICHOLAS MONSARRAT**
The Cruel Sea was highly praised in 1953 for its 'ruthless realism'. Even though the years since have shocked us far more ruthlessly by showing what war does to men, its impact is dramatically undiminished. Everything in the film seemed to go against the usual British wartime cinema of stiff upper lips, fought-back emotions, relentless cheerfulness and conscious patriotism. In this story - based on Nicholas Monsarrat's story of a Royal Navy corvette on convoy duty in the Atlantic - sailors swimming for their lives retch on the oil in their lungs; shocked engine-room men scramble up from below like black faced monkeys; the dying groans of the wounded are heard up the speaking-tubes by appalled officers on the bridge. The film, to use a later phrase, 'lays it on the line'. It shows how the power of command becomes, in wartime, the duty to be ruthless and in Jack Hawkins it has an actor who knew (none better at the time) how to convince us of this. No one ever forgets the shattering moment when his Captain Ericson, instead of picking up shipwrecked British sailors, gives orders to steam through the struggling bodies and then to depth-charge the U-Boat skulking beneath them. Hawkins never did anything better. Ealing Studios produced The Cruel Sea from Eric Ambler's script and it was the sort of film, about a tight-knit band of men in a crisis, which they did well. The director, Charles Frend, had already made Scott of the Antarctic; he knew how to get tough performances from a cast that includes Donald Sinden, Stanley Baker, Denholm Elliot and Bruce Seton. It remains one of the best endorsements of wartime professionalism - a better word in this context than heroism. People are equal to the crisis, it says. And if we have since been made horrifyingly aware that the cost of doing what needs to be done may not be all that equally distributed, The Cruel Sea is one of those films that brought the lesson home first. ALEXANDER WALKER

## Cast

(in credits order)

* Jack Hawkins as Lieutenant Commander (later Commander) George Ericson, RNR
* Donald Sinden as Sub-Lieutenant (later Lieutenant-Commander) Keith Lockhart, RNVR
* John Stratton as Sub-Lieutenant Gordon Ferraby, RNVR
* Denholm Elliott as Sub-Lieutenant (later Lieutenant) John Morell, RNVR
* John Warner as Sub-Lieutenant Baker, RNVR
* Stanley Baker as Lieutenant James Bennett, RANVR
* Bruce Seton as Petty Officer Bob Tallow (Coxswain)
* Liam Redmond as Chief Engine Room Artificer Jim Watts
* Virginia McKenna as Second Officer Julie Hallam, WRNS
* Moira Lister as Elaine Morell
* June Thorburn as Doris Ferraby
* Megs Jenkins as Gladys Bell (Tallow's sister)
* Meredith Edwards as Yeoman of Signals Wells
* Glyn Houston as Leading Seaman Phillips
* Alec McCowen as Leading Seaman Tonbridge
* Leo Phillips as Leading Torpedoman Wainwright
* Dafydd Havard as Signalman Rose
* Fred Griffiths as Leading Stoker Gracey
* Laurence Hardy as Leading Radar Mechanic Sellars
* Sam Kydd as Leading Steward Carslake
* John Singer as Stoker Grey
* Barry Steele as Engine Room Artificer Broughton
* Gerard Heinz as Polish Captain
* Gerik Schjelderup as Norwegian Captain
* Gaston Richer as French Captain
* Andrew Cruickshank as Scott-Brown
* Barry Letts as Raikes
* Kenn Kennedy as Allingham
* Harold Goodwin as ASDIC Operator
* George Curzon as Admiral at party
* Anthony Snell as RN Lieutenant
* Ronald Simpson as RN Captain
* Don Sharp as Lieutenant Commander
* Herbert C. Walton as the Waiter
* Jack Howard as a Survivor
* Russell Waters as ARP Warden
* Harold Jamieson as ARP Warden
* Warwick Ashton as Petty Officer Instructor