SINK THE BISMARCK! Movie Review

1960 Lewis Gilbert

Veteran director Lewis Gilbert does adequate work with difficult dramatic material, but he undercuts himself with some blatant jingoism. The story of one of the most important European naval engagements of the war is inherently interesting. The Bismarck was the largest battleship ever built, in a time when the battleship was still considered the most dangerous ocean-going weapon. In its day, it was the equivalent of George Lucas's Death Star. The film begins with what appears to be actual archival footage of the Bismarck’ s christening in February 1939, attended by Hitler himself.

Flash forward to Edward R. Murrow broadcasting form London in 1941, at perhaps the lowest point of the war for England. Its forces are being battered on all fronts. Naval operations are run from an Admiralty war room buried deep beneath London. Capt. John Shepard (Kenneth More) is the new boss, arriving for his first day on the job. Straightaway, he lets everyone know that he's a “by the book” guy, completely unsentimental and, as a fellow officer puts it, “as cold as a witch's heart.” He pays no attention to the human costs of the conflict. For him, the war is a chess game. A map of the North Atlantic is the board. The ships are represented by pieces of wood. On hand in the war room to test his hard-heartedness is Lt. Anne Davis (Dana Wynter).

Shepard's opposite number is Adm. Lutjens (Karel Stepanek), the fleet commander who's in charge of the Bismarck and its sister ship, which have just left the Baltic Sea and are trying to get into the open waters. Once Shepard learns that the two ships are on the move, he frantically pulls his own ships from other positions to stop them.

In terms of plot, writer Edmund H. North (working from C.S. Forster's book) stays close to real events while compressing them. He and director Gilbert are also fairly successful at making the insular intensity of the war room seem real. A subplot involving Shepard's son is fairly predictable, and if Dana Wynter is finally reduced to little more than window dressing, she is gorgeous window dressing. Howard Lydecker's special effects are obviously model ships in tanks, but they're integrated well enough into the black-and-white action along with documentary footage of real ship's guns being loaded and fired. The action scenes of the carrier-based Swordfish fighters—open-cockpit biplanes armed with torpedoes—attacking the German ships aren't as realistic as some other sea-based war films.

A much larger flaw is the one-dimensional stereotyping of the German characters. “Never forget that you are Germans!” the Admiral bellows at one point. “Never forget that you are Nazis!” Since he and Shepard are never in the same scene, it's difficult for the viewer to become emotionally involved in their conflict. The supporting characters also lack strong personalities, and so the whole film is more interesting than enjoyable, even for the most committed fan.

Cast: Kenneth More (Capt. Jonathan Shepard), Dana Wynter (Anne Davis), Karel Stepanek (Adm. Lutjens), Carl Mohner (Capt. Lindemann), Laurence Naismith (1st Sea Lord), Geoffrey Keen (A.C.N.S.), Michael Hordern (Cmdr. on King George), Maurice Denham (Cmdr. Richards), Esmond Knight (Capt. on Prince of Wales), Michael Goodliffe (Capt. Banister), Esmond Knight (Capt. on Prince of Wales), Jack Watling (Signals Officer), Jack Gwillim (Capt. on King George), Mark Dignam (Capt. on Ark Royal), Ernest Clark (Capt. on Suffolk), John Horsley (Capt. on Sheffield), Sydney Tafler (1st Workman), John Stuart (Capt. on Hood), Walter Hudd (Adm. on Hood), Sean Barrett (Able Seaman Brown), Peter Burton (Capt. on First Destroyer), Edward R. Murrow (Himself); Written by: Edmund H. North; Cinematography by: Christopher Challis; Music by: Clifton Parker. Producer: 20th Century-Fox, John Brabourne. British. Running Time: 97 minutes. Format: VHS, Beta.