*** This review contains spoilers *** This movie shows just how much you could do in 1950 with but a small budget, some ingenuity in the writing, and, as film-makers of the day used to say, "the cooperation of the United States Navy".
The premise is that a German U-boat has escaped the general German surrender at the end of World War Two five years earlier and is practicing piracy out of an improvised hidden base somewhere in South America. Its stereotypically haughty, autocratic (not to mention, aristocratic) and diabolical Nazi German commander has a plan, though, to retire from this career that must sooner or later come to an end (the boat hasn't had a proper overhaul in six years!), deciding to use his boat for one last foray to effect the kidnap of an ailing European scientist of value to the security of The Free World so he can sell him to an undisclosed (but clearly, Soviet-aligned Communist) enemy for a fortune in cash. The United States seeks to find and recover the scientist by use of a program of secret agents operating undercover in South America.
Thus the movie seeks to cross the then-emerging "G-Man" Cold War counter-espionage genre with a submarine movie and concomitant action at sea (with the obligatory boy-spy-meets-tainted-girl-with-a-foreign-accent angle)and that's about what you get here. The action uses very little in the way of special effects, relying instead upon actual action footage of U.S. naval vessels, aircraft, and explosive ordnance. The submarine angle is surprisingly well-done for a B-movie and (speaking as a former submariner) was clearly decently technically advised. The loan of a veteran American World War Two Fleet Submarine to portray the U-boat in all the interior and the vast majority of exterior shots is jarring to the cognoscenti, however (as is perhaps the terminology, which is about 100% U.S. Navy standard submarine procedure), a substitution not unlike casting Elizabeth Taylor in the Marilyn Monroe part in THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH, on the theory that one rising young starlet is as good as another.
The actress in the lead, Marta Toren, similarly, was billed in her day as "the next Ingrid Bergman", and in that regard it is not hard to see why. Brunette and European, one wonders if she might not have learned her acting by actively studying Bergman films hour after hour on end, so similar are her mannerisms and even her vocalizations in many places. The male lead looks like he might have been billed as "another Robert Mitchum" except that he has nowhere near the presence of Bob. The remaining figures are pretty typical examples of classic European types and B-movie bureaucrats you used to see in movies and television of that era. The musical score is likewise very generic for the period. The one bit that really impressed me was how the story wraps up at the end with a surprising bit of ingenious writing in lieu of what seemed would be another inevitable potentially complicated and expensive action sequence (or at least uninteresting 1950's two-minute shoot-out of some kind), and with the writers actually indulging in a self-congratulatory joke by having the villain actually declare out loud at the denouement, "how ingenious!"
I guess the movie's main failing is that it seems a bit contrived as well as a bit slow even though it really shouldn't be. Overall, this wouldn't be a half bad made-for-TV-movie if there had been any such thing in 1950, and so I give it a "6" -- not must-see, but competent and tolerable.
The premise is that a German U-boat has escaped the general German surrender at the end of World War Two five years earlier and is practicing piracy out of an improvised hidden base somewhere in South America. Its stereotypically haughty, autocratic (not to mention, aristocratic) and diabolical Nazi German commander has a plan, though, to retire from this career that must sooner or later come to an end (the boat hasn't had a proper overhaul in six years!), deciding to use his boat for one last foray to effect the kidnap of an ailing European scientist of value to the security of The Free World so he can sell him to an undisclosed (but clearly, Soviet-aligned Communist) enemy for a fortune in cash. The United States seeks to find and recover the scientist by use of a program of secret agents operating undercover in South America.
Thus the movie seeks to cross the then-emerging "G-Man" Cold War counter-espionage genre with a submarine movie and concomitant action at sea (with the obligatory boy-spy-meets-tainted-girl-with-a-foreign-accent angle)and that's about what you get here. The action uses very little in the way of special effects, relying instead upon actual action footage of U.S. naval vessels, aircraft, and explosive ordnance. The submarine angle is surprisingly well-done for a B-movie and (speaking as a former submariner) was clearly decently technically advised. The loan of a veteran American World War Two Fleet Submarine to portray the U-boat in all the interior and the vast majority of exterior shots is jarring to the cognoscenti, however (as is perhaps the terminology, which is about 100% U.S. Navy standard submarine procedure), a substitution not unlike casting Elizabeth Taylor in the Marilyn Monroe part in THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH, on the theory that one rising young starlet is as good as another.
The actress in the lead, Marta Toren, similarly, was billed in her day as "the next Ingrid Bergman", and in that regard it is not hard to see why. Brunette and European, one wonders if she might not have learned her acting by actively studying Bergman films hour after hour on end, so similar are her mannerisms and even her vocalizations in many places. The male lead looks like he might have been billed as "another Robert Mitchum" except that he has nowhere near the presence of Bob. The remaining figures are pretty typical examples of classic European types and B-movie bureaucrats you used to see in movies and television of that era. The musical score is likewise very generic for the period. The one bit that really impressed me was how the story wraps up at the end with a surprising bit of ingenious writing in lieu of what seemed would be another inevitable potentially complicated and expensive action sequence (or at least uninteresting 1950's two-minute shoot-out of some kind), and with the writers actually indulging in a self-congratulatory joke by having the villain actually declare out loud at the denouement, "how ingenious!"
I guess the movie's main failing is that it seems a bit contrived as well as a bit slow even though it really shouldn't be. Overall, this wouldn't be a half bad made-for-TV-movie if there had been any such thing in 1950, and so I give it a "6" -- not must-see, but competent and tolerable.