The Cruel Sea
Dir: Charles Frend
1953
****
The Cruel Sea is a classic War film but unlike many of its contemporaries. It's remembered as a propaganda film but I would say that wasn't really the case. It never seems particularly pro or anti war but simply showed it for what it was. The script is brilliant and the film is well written. We see the different classes mix and not always favorably to either end. We see how many of the senior seamen had no nautical experience whatsoever and we see how devastating it can be to come back home to civilisation. Many of the characters story-lines are heartbreaking, especially when you consider that many of them happened to many solders throughout the war. The haunted memory of difficult decisions also ring true. An honest and brutal truth about the second world war through the eyes of a U-Boat crew and a terribly underrated and unappreciated classic.