Director:
Cinematography by
| Russell Harlan |
Duel of great stars into a submarine : a veteran Gable and an impulsive Lancaster
This interesting underwater drama concerns about an exciting battle of wits. Clark Gable stars as a veteran commander who is scheming to revenge during a dangerous voyage and solid Burt Lancaster as the second in command who attempts anticipate his every move. Tensions run high and rise between commandant Rich and Lt. Jim Bledsoe and the crew(Brad Dexter, Jack Warden, Don Rickles and ‘Nick Cravat’, usual pal of Lancaster), as they set out from Pearl Harbor to destroy a Japanese cruiser. The veteran sub commander risks his crew when he’s looking for vengeance . The crew is pushed to the brink of death by risked mission executed by avenger captain whose former submarine the Japonese had to blow up.
This nail-biter is a tightly-knit drama centered on the sea maneuvers going after of Japan’s mightiest battleship of the Pacific. The film is famous as one of the best WWII submarine movies, though some scenes at sea, however, suffer from the utilization of obvious models in a just as obvious studio tank. The motion picture is meticulously mounted by Robert Wise who always manages to make a course correction in the nick of time and deliver another direct success. Screenplay by John Gay from a book by commandant Edward Bleach.Atmospheric musical score by Franz Waxman and appropriate black and white cinematography by Rusell Harlan.
The film originated a big hit into submarine genre, along with : ‘Torpedo run(1958)’by Joseph Pevney with Glenn Ford and Ernest Borgnine; ‘Das Boot(1982)’ by Wolfgang Petersen with Jurgen Prochnow;’Hunt for red october(1990)’ by John McTiernan with Alec Baldwin and Sean Connery ; ‘Crimson tide’ by Tony Scott with Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman; ‘K19’ with Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson.
Gable and Lancaster make the seas boil in the battle adventure that hits like a torpedo!
Run Silent Run Deep is one of the best films Clark Gable made following his return from World War II, and one of the great submarine movies. Destination Tokyo comes to mind as a film of equal merit, and with a similar theme, but made during the war. Released a good decade after the war, Run Silent Run Deep isn’t hampered by the propaganda and Japanese paranoia of its 1943 counterpart.
Gable made three other WWII movies after 1945, of varying quality. Betrayed (1954), an uninspired melodrama, is the worst, and Homecoming (1948), a medical team in the war zone, is not much better, both with Lana Turner. By contrast, Command Decision, also 1948, is top-notch, the actor a bomber wing commander in England, a precursor of the superior Twelve O’Clock High released the next year, with Gregory Peck enduring similar pressures and conflicts.
During all this time, from 1945 to his death in 1960, Clark Gable was trying to continue his pre-war image as the male half of a romantic pair. His name alone garnered the loveliest ladies of the time—Ava Gardner, Sophia Loren, Deborah Kerr, Greer Garson, Marilyn Monroe, to name a few—but the age difference was at times more than a little ridiculous. He had aged less gracefully than, say, Cary Grant, who had a similar problem, and when Gable was cast opposite the likes of Doris Day and Carroll Baker, twenty-four and thirty years younger, he was pushing the envelope.
Grant had solved his difficulty by dropping out of films while still on top, living a useful life for another twenty years. Gable’s exit was unscheduled and premature. He died of a heart attack soon after finishing The Misfits and a few months before his fifth wife, Kay Williams, gave birth to his only child, John Clark Gable, discounting the girl he fathered with Loretta Young during the making of The Call of the Wild (1935).
While filming The Misfits, the actor had commented, “This is the best picture I have made, and it’s the only time I’ve been able to act.”
In Run Silent Run Deep, he is in top form. If a little old (56) to be a submarine commander again, Commander “Rich” Richardson (Gable) has been demoted to a desk job. Everyday for over two hundred days he and his yeoman aide Mueller (Jack Warden) have re-enacted sinking the Japanese destroyer the “Akikaze”—on his desk top with four-inch models. The bitter and resentful Richardson, when he had commanded his last sub, had failed to sink that vessel, being sunk himself, and, now, comes news that another sub has been lost in the same area, the Bungo Straits.
The commander, however, has been using his influence to be assigned another sub, and has selected “the best exec I could possibly get in the whole Navy,” a Lieutenant Jim Bledsoe (Burt Lancaster). Bledsoe was to have captained that very sub and understandably is upset to be demoted to second in command. Face to face with Richardson in his front yard, he requests a transfer, which his new boss denies.
Aboard the sub are a crew of familiar supporting actors, including Warden, Brad Dexter, Joe Maross, Rudy Bond, Eddie Foy III and Don Rickles in his first movie role. Also there’s Nick Cravat as a galley sailor, Russo, whose job is to throw the garbage overboard, a plot-defining event. Cravat was Lancaster’s one-time circus partner and bit player in a number of Burt’s other films, i.e., The Flame and the Arrow, The Crimson Pirate, The Scalphunters and The Island of Dr. Moreau.
Commander Richardson has the crew repeat an unorthodox practice drill. The sub goes into an emergency dive, levels off at fifty feet and simulates torpedo release. He wants this maneuver done in thirty-five seconds; after many dives, the crew do it in thirty-one. When Richardson avoids a Japanese sub, he’s seen as a coward by the officers and men, who wonder, then, the purpose of it all. “Obedience? Efficiency?” Bledsoe asks. “Or the best drilled cowards in the Navy?” Against a Japanese warship the drills become reality, the men realizing that it was a close bow shot Richardson was after—two “fish” into the bow of the enemy, with devastating effect.
During a depth charge attack in the Bungo Straits, Richardson suffers a concussion and Lieutenant Bledsoe assumes command. While in and out of consciousness in his bunk, Richardson hears what everyone else aboard is hearing—an unusual “beeping” sound. The words of the sonar man, “I can’t make that out,” echo in the injured man’s head. So, that’s the reason all attempts to get the “Akikaze” failed: there was an undetected Japanese sub in the channel!
Great duel Lancaster – Gable interpretations and good submarine movie.
There are several underwater films before this, “Destination Tokyo” (1943), “Operation Pacific” (1951), “The Frogmen” (1951), “Hell and High Water” (1954) or “Torpedo Run” (1958) , but none like “Run Silent, Run Deep” includes as well the details and settings of this sub genre.
“Run Silent, Run Deep” is not the usual military adventure, with more action than technical care in the plot. Here all the recreation of the interior of the ship is almost perfect, but especially the naval language is extraordinary. Anyone who has seen “Das Boot” (1981) Petersen or “Crimson Tide” Tony Scott (1995) finds strong similarities in the same.
The great merit of this film is that Robert Wise perfects a simple plot, increasing their accuracy to take care of the details and military language. And also give the argument Wise gets dramatic force with the duel between Burt Lancaster and Clark Gable, each with superb performances.
The film is essential for fans of the genre of submarines and especially crucial for any film of this genre will come next.
OldMoviesaregreat 