The Enemy Below
Picture:
B- Sound: B- Extras: C Film: C+
Once in a
while, Hollywood gives us a submarine film,
usually involving a cat and mouse game between at least one submarine and a
ship, if not two subs. By the time Dick
Powell’s The Enemy Below (1957)
arrived, it was a big-budget remake of an even older film, The Seas Beneath (1931). The
thing with these kinds of films is that they wither work or they do not. Despite its age and reliance on star power, this
holds up well enough.
Robert
Mitchum is the American captain of a huge destroyer ship being followed by a
German U-Boat in service to the Nazis helmed by Curt Jurgens, with Theodore
Bikel and David Hedison also starring.
The obstacle is that the film is as interested in the conflict between
the two as it is in showing off the CinemaScope format. That move would be influential but limits the
suspense here. The simplicity of good
versus evil is also very dated, even by “Nazi Analog” standards, the kind of
problem a film like Morituri (also
part of this Fox series of War genre DVDs, reviewed elsewhere on this site)
manages to delve more into.
Wendell
Mayes screenplay is based on the novel by Commander D.A. Rayner, and some of
the tendency might be to too literally adapt the book in booklike form. Otherwise, the film still has its moments,
even as it drags on to some predictability and offers moments that while
original, have been outdone in later film with the same situation. It is worth adding that Robert Wise, who I am
no fan of, made the submarine film Run
Silent, Run Deep a year later in black and white and it was a far better
thriller.
The
anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 image was shot by cinematographer Harold
Rosson, A.S.C., with DeLuxe color processing.
The print is in good shape and this transfer is not bad, though not a
digital High Definition source. Jurgens
was later the heavy in the 1977 James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me and that is a film that tries to emulate the
look of this one to some extent. It
certainly still beats the look what remains one of the worst of all submarine
films, U-571. The Dolby Digital 4.0 Stereo is a recreation
of the four-track magnetic stereo that original appeared on the 35mm
CinemaScope prints and is better than the 2.0 English and Spanish Mono
tracks. The music by Leigh Harline is
not bad either, but the magnetic originals were likely fuller sounding than
this. Extras include six trailers for
Fox films, including one for this one, and three Fox Movietone News segments
related to the film in some way. You can
get the DVD and judge for yourself.
- Nicholas Sheffo
