The Enemy Below (1957)
DIRECTOR: Dick Powell
CAST: Robert Mitchum, Curt Jurgens, Theodore Bikel, David Hedison, Frank Albertson, Russell Collins, Kurt Kreuger
REVIEW:
From actor-turned-director Dick Powell, adapted by Wendell Mayes from the 1956 novel of the same name by Denys Rayner, comes this fairly small-scale but entertaining cat-and-mouse game between two men—-the captain of an American destroyer, and the captain of a German U-Boat—-in the South Atlantic during WWII.
The American destroyer the USS Haynes is on an uneventful patrol in the South Atlantic. The men don’t expect to see much action, but have their doubts about their new Captain Murrell (Robert Mitchum) who doesn’t come out of his cabin for days, leading to jokes that he’s seasick. But the leisurely voyage is interrupted when the Haynes randomly crosses paths with a U-Boat captained by the cunning Von Stolberg (Curt Jurgens), who is en route to a German base to deliver valuable intelligence. Despite his crew’s doubts about his fitness for command, Captain Murrell quickly and efficiently springs into action. But his German counterpart Von Stolberg is as wily as Murrell, and a skilled and dangerous game of cat-and-mouse ensues between the two vessels and the two captains.
Despite a limited budget (less than $2 million), The Enemy Below avoids making its limitations obvious, and model work and special effects are effective enough (of course, it’s helped by limited settings, mostly cutting back-and-forth between the Haynes and the interior set of Von Stolberg’s U-Boat). The movie was based on the novel of the same name by Denys Rayner, a British naval officer involved in anti-submarine warfare during the Battle of the Atlantic (in the novel the warship is British, but switched to American for the movie), and its technical advisers included Albert Beck, a German former U-Boat submariner. While the specific story and characters involved are fictional, it took loose inspiration from a real incident in which SPOILER WARNING similar to the climax of the film, the USS Buckley rammed and sank a U-Boat and captured many of the German crew. Despite being set in the South Atlantic, filming of the open ocean scenes took place in the Pacific Ocean near Oahu, Hawaii. Some Star Trek fans may know that The Enemy Below was basically remade, almost beat-for-beat (with a sci-fi twist) as the Star Trek Original Series episode “Balance of Terror” about a cat-and-mouse game between the Enterprise and a cloaked Romulan warbird.
The emphasis is on a suspenseful game of cat-and-mouse more than conventional “action”, but the escalating high-stakes chess match between Murrell and Von Stolberg, in which each man tries to read the other’s intentions and see through his tricks and any error in judgment could cost them their ship or their life (and the lives of their crew) is riveting, especially in the climax when the destroyer and the submarine finally come “face-to-face”. Murrell and Von Stolberg are both cool and collected and capable, making them worthy adversaries. Considering it was made in 1957, only twelve years after the end of WWII, the movie is also surprisingly even-handed and the German captain Von Stolberg is portrayed surprisingly sympathetically, giving us a cat-and-mouse war game in which there’s not a real “villain”. We get a little backstory on each of our captains; Murrell is recovering from being stranded at sea and losing his wife when his previous merchant ship was torpedoed by a U-Boat, while Von Stolberg has lost his sons to the war and gets a monologue making it clear he is weary and disillusioned and no great fan of Hitler. In fact, the sole conspicuous Nazi onboard the German U-Boat (Arthur La Ral) is treated as a bit of a joke by the rest of the crew; we get a reaction shot of Von Stolberg looking on disdainfully while the man reads Mein Kampf (lest one feel the Germans are being a bit too whitewashed here, the German Navy was generally considered the least pro-Nazi branch of the German armed forces during WWII). The war-weary and seemingly mostly apolitical German submarine crew feels like a bit of a precursor to the crew of Wolfgang Petersen’s anti-war magnum opus Das Boot 24 years later. The two captains develop a grudging mutual respect over the course of their cat-and-mouse battle of wits and neither is terribly gung-ho at the prospect of killing the other: “I don’t want to know the man I’m trying to destroy”, Murrell confides at one point, while Von Stolberg sees no honor in the war he’s fighting. The way things wrap up might be a tad unlikely (and a little too sappy “happy ending”), but the way there is an engaging ride.
Robert Mitchum and Curt Jurgens (a popular European movie star in his first American film) get roughly equal amounts of screentime (and are top-billed together in the opening credits), and both give commanding performances as our two dueling captains (casting Murrell and Von Stolberg with two actors with authoritative presences means neither co-star overshadows the other), even though they don’t come “face-to-face” until the climax. There’s a certain irony in Jurgens’ casting as the anti-Nazi U-Boat captain; Jurgens in real life was critical of the Nazi regime in his native Germany during the 1940s and spent time in a labor camp, eventually escaping and going into hiding until after WWII. There’s a further irony in that Von Stolberg’s loyal right-hand man and confidant “Heinie” Schwaffer is played by prolific Jewish actor and folk singer Theodore Bikel. Aboard the Haynes, the most distinctive supporting players are David Hedison as the inexperienced but capable executive officer and Russell Collins as a standard issue folksy doctor. Some viewers may notice a very young Doug McClure among the Haynes’ ensigns.
The Enemy Below has a few flaws mostly related to its age, though none insurmountable. Some of the supporting acting is overdramatic in typical 1950s fashion, and we get a corny closing speech from a side character about “finding hope in the middle of the ocean, in the middle of a war” that drives the anti-war “not so different after all” message home with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Despite being mainly cast with actual native German-speaking actors, the German characters speak English (presumably to appease subtitles-averse American audiences), lacking the extra touch of authenticity of some other war films like The Longest Day or A Bridge Too Far. But compared to how compelling the central cat-and-mouse game is, such minor flaws fall by the wayside. The Enemy Below stands in worthy company alongside later submarine warfare flicks as a compact, competently-written, and (for the most part) ably acted little drama.
* * *