Myth makers? The Battle of the River Plate (1956), BFI, Cinema Unbound

Ian Hunter and Anthony Quinn

Why do British filmmakers revert so often to the War for inspiration, ten years after its end, and what need in their audience do these films, probably the most consistently popular output of British studios, satisfy?

John Gilbert, Sight and Sound, winter ’56-‘57

 

Well, Mr Gilbert, they were still making war films ten years later when I was a boy, and we grew up reading The Victor Book for Boys and Commando stories, watching Dad’s Army well into the 1970s, before recent politics began quoting the greatest generation as proof of our national heritage. Now certain sections do indeed, as the writer also suggested, look back on the war, “almost nostalgically” as a time when allegiances were clean-cut, “unsullied by the doubts… of an uneasy peace.”

 

Back in 1956, the grief and exhaustion were first hand and a marking one of the war’s remarkable incidents was something audiences were understandably interested in no matter how much some cineastes wanted more forward thinking. Pressburger and Powell undertook this task with due diligence and a documentary approach and they were following in a tradition established after The Great War with “re-enactments” such as The Battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands (1927). Powell even wrote a novel, The Last Voyage of the Graf Spee hoping that future generations would “absorb it into their experience.”

 

For The Archers perhaps, war films were there not as a celebration but a reminder of sacrifice and human decency at the heart of disaster. Pressburger had been displaced by Nazism in the early thirties and the conflict was personal in different ways for them both. As with Germans from Conrad Anton Walbrook’s Schuldorff in Blimp, Peter Finch’s Captain Langsdorff is credited with decency and bravery. The actual character didn’t sink merchant vessels until the crews were evacuated and he shows respect to the captains of those vessels. At the start of the film, we see him extending hospitality to Captain Dove (an excellent Bernard Lee) who’s ship he has just sunk; the men behave with professional dignity even though Dove thinks his ship was in neutral waters.

Peter Finch and Bernard Lee

At the end, Dove is there to commiserate with Langsdorff, a decent gesture and important to show as Europe triad to mend bridges but Pressburger always knew there were good people in Germany even during the height of the conflict. Pressburger had been given a copy of Captain Patrick Dove's book I Was Graf Spee's Prisoner (1940) which helped inform his treatment of the two men and to show the group of captured captains at the heart of the battle.

 

The pocket battleship had been sent to the southern hemisphere before the start of the war with the knowledge that Britain, despite its vastly superior navy, relied on importing food and supplies in a way Germany didn’t. Shortly after hostilities began, she started sinking supply ships a cross an area from the Indian Ocean to the South Atlantic and by changing her livery she was able to hide her identity and location, being re-fuelled by a supply ship only she would know would be in a certain quadrant on a certain date. The British sent out hunting parties to try and intercept the enemy but the sea is vast and the sinkings continue.

 

Christopher Challis is on hand again to give us some stirring shots of the ships at sea against the giant sky and there’s one especially breath-taking sequence when fuel and passengers are transferred from a supply ship to the Graf Spee as both steam along through the waves.

 

The Graf Spee is “played” by the US Navy’s heavy cruiser, Salem whilst the four British ships feature two of the original vessels, the Leander-Class light cruiser, the Birkenhead built HMNZS Achilles (by this stage assigned to the Indian Navy as INS Delhi) and the County Class heavy cruiser HMS Cumberland which missed the battle but was there for the finale. The York class heavy cruiser, HMS Exeter is portrayed by HMS Jamaica and a second Leander-Class cruiser, HMS Ajax by HMS Sheffield. The action is shot in the Mediterranean and Powell does a superb job of presenting the battle although a lot depends on the actors’ responses from the various bridges.

 

Both sides play a full-scale game of Battleships in which the stakes couldn’t be higher with one merchant naval ship able to give details of the type of ship and location before being sunk. The Commander of the British squadron, Commodore (later Rear-Admiral) Henry Harwood (Anthony Quayle) works out that the battleship’s most likely course of action will be to head towards Buenos Ares for refitting. There are tense moments when, in the early hours of the day when she’d arrive based on her cruising speed of some twenty-eight knots – only a few British ships were as fast – with the crew of all three ships nervously scanning the horizon for signs of smoke.

 

Once seen the three ships immediately rush to engage following Harwood’s plan to minimise the Spee’s advantages of firepower. Achilles and Ajax attack from one side whilst Exeter attacks another, splitting the German’s fire but all sustaining severe damage. The film is so very procedural and there are many shots of reacting sailors willing the shots to miss and hoping for direct hits. The actual engagement lasted for around an hour and here is following in real time for the initial encounter before presenting some 20 minutes of action. By this time sixty-five shells had hit the battleship and Exeter had been so badly mauled she had to limp off to the Falklands – she would survive to fight another day. The Graf Spee needed repairs herself and headed off to Montevideo with the two other ships in pursuit.

 

Anchored in neutral waters the battleship is only allowed to make repairs to her superstructure and not weaponry and a diplomatic game of big cat and three mice, after the Cumberland arrives. Could the three take on the battleship or will she manage to wait it out… Powell and Pressburger use an opportunist American journalist (Lionel Murton) as a means of commentating on events and there’s a cast of thousands on the harbour watching events unfold.

 

The film was criticised in some quarters for its length but it still grips on the big screen especially on the 35mm print we saw… It’s my age but the crackle and pop of analogue media roots me in a cinematic mode I’ve known since childhood from the Abbey Cinema in Liverpool to the Odeon, Astra and many more. Cinematic ships of the night if we’re going to be nautical.

 

The performers give their finest in terms of martial resolution and a number had served in the navy during the war such as Scouser John Gregson who plays Captain Frederick "Hookie" Bell of HMS Exeter and Jack Gwillim playing Captain Edward Parry, HMS Achilles served 20 years in the Royal Navy, rising to the rank of Commander. Peter Finch, who served in the Australian Army during the war is also so good as Captain Hans Langsdorff who earns so much respect, perhaps the rope hanging from the yardarm when Captain Dove comes to give him his best wishes, is a tip of the hat to his fate three days later when he committed suicide?

Lionel Murton broadcasting on all channels as Christopher Lee sulks

Brian Easdale’s score is suitably stirring; he never puts a wrong note, does he? On the technical side, and so important given the film’s realism, the props team does especially well in recreating the end of the Graf Spee with a 23-foot-long model of Salem in a six-foot deep tank at Pinewood Studios being convincing enough to show the damage done in battle and the final end.

 

They also serve who only stand and paste, clearly.

There are some excellent shots of the model in the studio on the superb Reel Streets site, which is simply on of the best film resources on this internet.

No, not giants but a scale model...