Through the years, a filmography has accumulated that, for the naval history aficionado, is worth cherishing and revisiting. Now, it's possible to create your own DVD library of naval movie classics that have been restored and that, if you grew up watching them on television, can be a visual revelation in the digital format. No more grainy, chopped-up, commercial-crammed late-show broadcasts, thank you very much. These films are finally getting the respect they deserve.
Here, for the collector and movie fan who also happens to be a naval-history buff, is our list of library essentials. Of course, many more naval-related movies are out there, and more of them are becoming available on DVD all the time. What follows is not intended to shortchange any of them; this list of core titles can be the foundation for a collection that's easily expanded. So, without further ado, anchors aweigh!
Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)
Despite its age, this landmark film is still thoroughly entertaining. Based on the novel by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall, the dramatization of the famous 1789 mutiny offers no shades of nuance. The moral universe is as black and white as the cinematography.
The captain is inhumanly cruel, and Fletcher Christian is the clear-cut good guy. Charles Laughton's wicked, simpering Captain William Bligh is one of the definitive über-villains of the silver screen. Clark Gable (no movie star ever looked more naked without his trademark mustache) is stalwart and heroic as the mutinous-yet-virtuous Christian. Franchot Tone, usually an annoying presence, provides solid support here as Christian's friend Roger Byam.
With plenty of high-seas excitement, a lush depiction of a sensual paradise that must have pushed the boundaries of the moral code, and powerful, emotional acting, Mutiny on the Bounty is the only movie ever to have three simultaneous Academy Award nominees for best actor (Laughton, Gable, Tone); they all lost to Victor McLaglen (The Informer), but Mutiny did succeed in winning best picture. It's one of the classic naval films of all time, as well as one of the great adventure masterpieces from Hollywood's golden age, and Warner Home Video deserves credit for making it available on DVD.
While the image quality indicates that this title didn't receive the exhaustive restoration of other classics reissued by Warner, this film still looks better than it has in years. Portions of the source material were no doubt a bit rough, and some scenes appear sharper than others. But the overall effect is certainly acceptable. Disc extras are scant but interesting and include a short documentary, Pitcairn Island Today, that offers a fascinating look at the mutineers' descendants, circa 1935; a brief newsreel clip about the Oscar win; and a pair of trailers, one for this movie and one for the 1962 remake. This brings up a relevant point: Two other major movie versions of the Bounty story were made, and while they are not on our list, they warrant mentioning. The second rendering from 1962 has much to recommend it. A splashy and colorful widescreen epic, it features gorgeous location photography, an accurate ship built from the keel up just for the film production, and a riveting portrayal by Trevor Howard as Bligh-more sympathetic than Laughton's, less sympathetic than Anthony Hopkins' 22 years later. But the whole enterprise comes crashing down thanks to the fatally miscast Marlon Brando, whose bizarre, lisping Christian sports the most thoroughly weird, laughably bad English accent in any movie ever. Nonetheless, the second Mutiny on the Bounty is rumored to be in the DVD production pipeline, and though it doesn't belong on our list, we're definitely going to grab it when it finally comes out.
The third version, 1984's The Bounty (not based on the Nordhoff and Hall novel), is the most historically fair-minded of the three films. It features a young Mel Gibson as Christian playing to Hopkins as Bligh. It's also a fun spot-the-future-stars exercise, with roles filled by then-unknowns such as Liam Neeson and Daniel Day-Lewis. But for all that, there's something equivocating and ambiguous about the film; The Bounty is very good, but it just doesn't achieve classic status. It's available on DVD, and completists should have it, but the disc is not in the pantheon of must-haves.
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)
From C. S. Forester to Patrick O'Brian, from Hornblower to Jack Aubrey, the new millennium has been good to naval history movie buffs thus far. The long-awaited screen adaptation of O'Brian's wildly popular Aubrey novels, Master and Commander is, quite simply, the best film ever made about the Age of Fighting Sail. Based on a combination of two of O'Brian's novels (hence the two-pronged movie title), Master and Commander is essentially about a running cat-and-mouse game between Captain "Lucky" Jack Aubrey's HMS Surprise and the French frigate Acheron, which Aubrey has orders to capture. Were that it were that easy. . . .
Master and Commander creates a world with multiple layers of detail, then populates it with a rich array of interesting and believable characters. Central to the story is the camaraderie between Captain Aubrey (Russell Crowe) and his more cerebral counterpart, the ship's surgeon, Dr. Stephen Maturin (Paul Bettany). Like the writings on which it is based, this is a movie that dwells on the little details of the warship. Naval life during the Napoleonic Wars is vividly and meticulously depicted. While the film is more of a character-driven piece than a pure action-adventure spectacle, it still presents more than enough hair-raising moments. When, within the first few minutes of the movie, French cannonballs blast forth from the fog and rip across Surprise's deck, the shock is sudden. We hear the deafening noise and duck the flying projectiles. A storm-tossed rounding of Cape Horn is truly frightening. And the sea fights are shown for the bloody, brutal affairs they were, making these sailors' bravery all the more impressive.
Crowe is thoroughly convincing as Captain Aubrey, the star's finest performance to date. Like his loyal crew, you'd sail right into hell behind an inspiring captain like Lucky Jack. It's a meaty, heroic part for an actor, and Crowe inhabits it fully. He combines the best qualities of Errol Flynn and Richard Burton when he delivers such lines as "England is under the threat of invasion. And though we be on the far side of the world, this ship is our home. This ship is England. So it's every hand to his rope or gun-quick's the word and sharp's the action!" Yeah!
Though it's possible to buy a one-disc edition of this modern-day masterpiece, if you've read this far, then the impressive Collector's Edition is most likely the choice for you. This is one of the finest DVD releases in recent memory, from the packaging to the sound and image quality to the generous apportionment of extra features (so many of them they warrant their own separate disc). The extras include documentaries, trailers, production minutiae, and six deleted scenes. The two-disc set comes in an attractive case that has a leathery, old-book look. It includes a couple of supplemental booklets and a fold-out map charting the voyage of the Surprise. They had naval buffs in mind when they put together this release. It's a four-star film, and it has been afforded four-star treatment for the home library.
They Were Expendable (1945)
This gem from John Ford is one of the best of World War II cinema's first wave-those movies made during or immediately after the war. Beyond its importance as a World War II film, it is a stirring, loving tribute to the men, the traditions, and the honor of the U.S. Navy.
There are a number of sentimental vignettes; the barroom scene is one, for instance. An old-timer is retiring after 30 years in the Navy, and as the Sailors toast him, the camera shows the young, fresh-faced kids new to the uniform-one is so young he's still just drinking milk. We see the oldest Sailor and finally the youngest, and there's a feeling of Navy continuity down through the ages. Ford was a maestro at these sort of throwaway side-bits; sometimes they're corny like only Ford could be, but when they work, they really work. With They Were Expendable, the story of PT boats facing a relentless foe as the Philippines falls, Ford really had his A-game on. Many consider it one of his best. An underlying sense of war's tragic toll plays throughout; comrades-in-arms never make it back; wartime romances don't necessarily receive Hollywood happy endings.
Best known for his Westerns, Ford revered the Navy and was immensely proud of his status as a captain in the Naval Reserve (his rank accompanies his name in the director's credit). Leading man Robert Montgomery actually had served as a PT skipper during the war, and you can't match that kind of real-life experience for adding believability to his world-weary acting job. It's a little amusing to see the iconic John Wayne receiving second billing behind the less-remembered Montgomery. Both stars turn in solid, low-key performances of quiet heroism and understated dignity. The story goes that Ford gave Wayne a relentlessly hard time during this film shoot. Wayne had opted out of the war, and Ford never let him forget it. Finally, Montgomery took the director aside and told him to stop picking on his costar. Hearing the actor who did serve in the war stick up for the actor who didn't brought the director to tears; he quit bothering Wayne after that.
They Were Expendable looks superb on DVD. Sadly, it includes little in the way of extras; the trailer is all you get. Still, the movie is the main thing. Available from Warner Home Video, it recently was released with new cover art as part of a John Ford-John Wayne boxed set.
The Caine Mutiny (1954)
The filmmakers behind this one had their work cut out for them: Herman Wouk's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel sold 3 million copies within the first couple years of its 1951 publication. With public awareness that high, any movie adaptation was going to have to get it right. Steered by producer Stanley Kramer and directed by Edward Dmytryk, The Caine Mutiny succeeded with flying colors. It became one of the top box-office hits in Columbia Pictures history and ended up garnering seven Academy Award nominations.
Though of course it's pure fiction, Wouk's tale of a mutiny on board a lowly minesweeper in World War II has become ingrained in the lore and mythology of the U.S. Navy. For the movie to work, the portrayal of Lieutenant Commander Philip Francis Queeg, the mercurial, paranoid skipper who triggers the mutiny, is pivotal. Humphrey Bogart's mannered performance actually ends up working to the benefit of the film, for while he overdoes it a bit, he successfully embodies the essential brittleness of the character. In the end, of course, Queeg is more to be pitied than scorned, and Bogart came tailor-made for the role of the monster you feel sorry for. Bogie received a Best Actor nomination for his work, and he is backed by a top-notch cast. Van Johnson is likable as always as one of the principal mutineers, Lieutenant Steve Maryk, and Robert Francis is well cast in his debut role as Ensign Willie Keith, the story's point-of-view character. But highest accolades go to a couple of other performers. As the loathsome snake Lieutenant Tom Keefer, Fred MacMurray is brilliantly, subtly despicable. (It is interesting that Wouk, the aspiring novelist, made Keefer, the aspiring novelist, the most vile character in his story.)
The other standout only shows up in the second half, but once he does, he just takes over the movie. As Lieutenant Barney Greenwald, the mutineers' defense attorney, Jose Ferrer is outstanding; when he appears, it's like the adult supervision has arrived at last. And the dressing-down he gives the officers of the Caine in the finale provides for a powerful, unforgettable moment in movie history: "While I was studying law, and Mr. Keefer here was writing his stories, and you, Willie, were tearing up the playing fields of dear old Princeton, who was standing guard over this fat, dumb, happy country of ours, eh? Not us. Oh, no, we knew you couldn't make any money in the service. So who did the dirty work for us? Queeg did." Great stuff!
Prior to the advent of DVD, we had seen The Caine Mutiny only on TV broadcasts, with nearly half the picture cropped off on the sides to make it fit the shape of the idiot box. Columbia Tri-Star/Sony's DVD is a flip-disc that offers The Caine Mutiny in both full-screen (translation: they cropped off nearly half the picture) and the original widescreen version, which is the way to go. The picture quality on the disc is just a tad on the soft side, but the colors are wonderfully vibrant. The bright blue background during the opening credits (featuring a rousing march theme) just jumps right out at you. The only extras are a couple of trailers, but again, the movie is the thing.
Victory at Sea (1952)
Oh, the memories: an image of turbulent, swelling waves suddenly superimposed with a coming-at-you capital "V," and then the unforgettable music kicks in. Victory at Sea was a milestone, setting the standard for an exciting new format-the television documentary. Originally aired on NBC from October 1952 to May 1953, the series had a huge impact on postwar America. Its audience, after all, was made up of the very veterans and their families who had gone through the titanic struggles of World War II a mere seven years earlier.
An amazingly ambitious compilation of war footage laced, we now know, with staged scenes lifted from both Allied and Axis wartime propaganda films, Victory at Sea offers a vivid and lasting tribute to the naval side of the war effort. Along with the exciting visuals, the program has two other strong attributes going for it. First, it's blessed with absolutely stirring music, courtesy of Richard Rodgers. The opening passage is one of the most evocative TV themes of all time, and throughout the show, the way in which music and image are melded for effect approaches a kind of art. Second is the appropriately stentorian narration by Leonard Graves, whose portentous, dramatic voice-over fits ideally with the poetic flair of the writing. It's easy and obvious to slight Victory at Sea for its dated techniques and its decided lack of any sort of objectivity. Heaven forbid, it uses music for emotional effect, it includes dramatic elements mixed with actual footage, it takes sides. . . . Wait a minute. Are we talking about Victory at Sea or the latest lavishly praised Ken Burns documentary?
Victory at Sea remains a perennial favorite for the naval history buff. Thanks to the History Channel, it's available on DVD in a nice boxed four-disc set. Picture quality varies throughout, which is to be expected since it was culled from footage of varying degrees of quality in the first place; sound quality likewise fluctuates. One could carp at the History Channel for packaging this set as the "50th Anniversary Collector's Edition" when it has no extra features whatsoever, except added-on episode introductions featuring Peter Graves (no relation to narrator Leonard Graves). But it's not a deal-killer. It's great to have the complete 26-episode Victory at Sea archived on disc.
Damn the Defiant! (1962)
This handsome British production, loosely inspired by the Spithead Mutiny of 1797, is a richly atmospheric evocation of the Age of Sail. The great Alec Guinness is downright Nelsonian (in fact, he would have been ideal for a Nelson biopic) in his portrayal of Captain Crawford, a distinguished Royal Navy officer in command of HMS Defiant. The good captain finds himself pitted against cruel, sadistic Lieutenant Scott-Padgett, played to the hilt by a sniveling Dirk Bogarde. Bogarde was British cinema's Next Big Thing for a while back in those days, but here it's hard to tell why; he comes off like an effete English version of Lorenzo Lamas. In all fairness, however, he does succeed in making the audience (along with his crew) hate his guts, which is what such arch-villains are supposed to do in this kind of story. As Scott-Padgett puts Captain Crawford's innocent young midshipman son through hell, just to get the captain's goat, you want to reach through the screen and throttle the despicable martinet.
Featuring authentic ship reproductions, great acting, and vivid period detail, Damn the Defiant! is a naval history enthusiast's delight. Best of all, it boasts a couple of blood-and-thunder sea fights that will have you out of your seat. With cannon roaring and cutlasses clanging, the sailing-ship battles-especially the one in the middle of the movie-are among the most exciting ever filmed.
And they are precisely why you need to watch Side A of Columbia TriStar's release, which features the movie in its original widescreen CinemaScope aspect ratio. Avoid Side B, which has the cropped image. If there's any movie that screams to be seen in widescreen, it's this one. Spatial logic aside, the photography is just plain gorgeous; some shots look like ship paintings come to life. Extras include talent bios, original movie poster scans, and trailers.
Hornblower (1999, 2001, 2003)
C. S. Forester's famous fictional hero of the Age of Nelson received first-class treatment with this phenomenal series of movies that aired in batches on the Arts & Entertainment network over a four-year period. Don't let the TV pedigree fool you, though. These are excellent films, destined to be considered seafaring classics. At first we were skeptical of the casting of Ioan Gruffudd as Horatio Hornblower. Perhaps it was the fond memories of Gregory Peck in the beloved 1951 big-screen version, Captain Horatio Hornblower (a movie that needs to be revived on DVD, incidentally). But five minutes into the first of the new Hornblower films, you realize that the casting department knew what it was doing. Gruffudd is just great; he handles the gradual evolution of Hornblower's personality brilliantly. You root for him, you feel sorry for him, you cheer him on, and you watch him grow from a scared, seasick 17-year-old newbie into a brave, resourceful, and thoroughly believable leader of men.
Along the way comes a whole lot of rousing naval action and adventure. This is good, old-fashioned swashbuckling derring-do, unabashedly celebratory of such radical notions as courage, honor, loyalty, and duty.
The movies are, for the most part, faithful to Forester's novels. Events are time-compressed, or switched out chronologically from where they occur in the books. But Hornblower's overall story arc is adhered to, and it would be difficult to complain, given the evident affection the filmmakers have shown the source material. Gruffudd is supported by a cast of characters who carry over from one movie into the next. Foremost among them is Captain (later Admiral) Sir Edward Pellew, Hornblower's mentor/father figure. As Pellew, Robert Lindsay steals the show. Lindsay (who looks nothing like the real-life Pellew) is a versatile actor who here becomes the very embodiment of a bold, decisive British naval officer. You can fully understand how he inspires his crew. You're ready to sail into battle, too, after one of his rousing speeches.
The Hornblower films were released on DVD in separate sets during the years of the original TV airings. The best way to get hold of them, if you didn't collect them back then, is the ultimate Horatio Hornblower Collector's Edition now available from A&E. It gathers all eight movies together in a handy boxed set. Exceptionally fine special features abound: cast interviews, a making-of documentary, etc. There's even an interactive 3-D naval cannon. Our favorite extra is England's Royal Warships, an informative documentary hosted by Prince Edward. Sound and picture quality is uniformly top-notch on all the films, the last two of which were shot in widescreen.
Das Boot (1981)
This classic German film (originally a German TV miniseries) is the best submarine movie of all time. Sweaty, scary, downbeat, and realistic, it is not for the claustrophobic-but, then, neither is a U-boat. Das Boot provided the launch pad to Hollywood for director Wolfgang Petersen, and made an international star out of Jürgen Prochnow, who plays the cynical World War II U-boat skipper as a man both hard-boiled and soulful. He is at the head of a cast of entirely believable characters, all bringing their various pieces of emotional baggage to the cramped quarters of the German sub.
It is rough going, with moments of pure tension, such as when they go deep to dodge depth-charges, or have to run the gauntlet past Gibraltar. The U-boat sailors all end up cultivating a shell-shocked, existential attitude. It's a little alarming to realize that, as we watch them and begin to worry about their fate, we have forgotten that they are the enemy, the predators. Perhaps it's because their cause seems, for them, more about their homeland than the Nazi Party. It must also be partly because of the universality of seagoing experience. They are sailors first, and Kriegsmarine sailors second.
Das Boot has earned a cult following over the years, and multiple versions and DVD options exist. The initial theatrical release (edited from the TV miniseries) was two and a half hours long. The Director's Cut, which became the gold-standard for this title, is three and a half hours long and is available in two DVD incarnations: A flip-disc with extras, or a Superbit edition on two discs with no extras. Our advice: Go with the standard-issue Director's Cut release. You get the extra features, and the difference in picture quality between it and the Superbit edition is only marginal.
But now, the Director's Cut has been superseded by the availability, thanks to DVD, of the original five-hour epic from German television. We still prefer the Director's Cut, which seems a happy medium between too little and too much. For the diehard Das Boot devotee, though, the five-hour version is the clear-cut choice. But that's just too long to be submerged in such cramped quarters, in our humble opinion.
Mister Roberts (1955)
The USS Reluctant (a.k.a. "the Bucket") is a ramshackle cargo ship operating in the backwaters of World War II. Poor Lieutenant Douglas Roberts: He's stuck on this tub and yearning desperately to get into the big show. He unflaggingly writes one fruitless transfer application after another, dreaming of service in a fighting ship. Lieutenant Roberts is surrounded by colorful characters, and though he's technically just the cargo officer, he's really the de facto leader of the vessel. The crewmen look up to him with respect, while the actual captain is a dysfunctional fascist to be avoided at all cost.
Welcome to the tragicomic world of Mister Roberts, one of the most beloved Navy movies ever. Roberts was a signature role for Henry Fonda. He'd won a Tony Award in the original production on Broadway, where he performed the part more than 1,300 times. The film adaptation marked his return to movies after a long hiatus. The affable, charismatic Fonda so effortlessly occupies the role of Roberts that it's hard to envision anyone else in the part. James Cagney, meanwhile, is a riot as the tyrannical Captain Morton. He's venal, but he's such a bantam rooster that he's as comedic as he is villainous.
As the ne'er-do-well Ensign Frank Pulver, young up-and-comer Jack Lemmon seems at times manic and over-the-top when viewed today, but audiences loved him; he won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar, and a long and illustrious career ensued. Best of all, Mister Roberts is graced by the effortlessly debonair presence of William Powell (star of the classic "Thin Man" movies) as the wise and venerable Doc. Powell and Fonda play off each other flawlessly; it was Powell's final screen appearance, and what a swan song it is.
John Ford handled directing chores until hospitalization for emergency gall bladder surgery stopped him short. Mervyn LeRoy came in to man the helm, and thus the movie today has the co-directorship credit. Mister Roberts seems stagey in places, betraying its Broadway roots. While much of it is played for laughs, in the end it is bittersweet and downright moving. The penultimate scene, with Pulver reading two letters, makes you choke up every time, no matter how many times you've seen it.
The opening shots of Mister Roberts offer the perfect example of what's so great about DVDs over hacked-up TV presentations. The wide CinemaScope image appears, blessedly uncropped. Lieutenant Roberts is on watch, staring wistfully at a Navy task force of aircraft carriers, battleships, and destroyers passing in the twilight. As the opening credits roll, we see the cloud-flecked evening sky, filled with gaudy pink and blue hues, over the silvery blue ocean where the mighty ships sail past. The picture is so sharp it's almost painfully beautiful. Warner's DVD also comes with a decent helping of extra features: production notes, cast and crew information, an "Ed Sullivan's Toast of the Town" clip, a commentary track by Jack Lemmon, and more.
Ours is a decidedly subjective list, and we know you have your own favorites, too. Send them to Movie Picks, Naval History, U.S. Naval Institute, 291 Wood Road, Annapolis, MD 21402. Or e-mail us at [email protected].