The Bedford Incident (1965)
A tightly focused moment in an imaginary cold war naval confrontation, the Incident in question is an example a small thing becoming a big one. This was the big fear in the Soviet/American nuclear buildup. Richard Widmark as the ship's captain is in a intense mode without the snarling excesses that made him a film noir staple. Martin Balsam as the newly arrived doctor, and Sydney Poitier as a congenial photographer both fill in roles of reason and normalcy--the you and me of the situation. And then there are the side characters, and the one impulsive moment that changes everything.
It's hard to call this a great film. The pace and editing, the photography, and the acting are all first class, certainly. The writing on a broad level is fine, the concept in total. On the immediate level, the dialog is good with a slightly predictable edge to many lines. But it works overall, just not brilliantly.
What holds it together for us is a sense of history--the very real fear of atomic annihilation--and it's a history that is thankfully starting to feel a little distant. Not that I think nuclear war is less likely now than then, but that this kind of war, with superpowers toe-to-toe at the brink, is no more. And so something the movie had then, the immediacy of pure terror, the walking out of the theater into the street and looking up with sweat at the sky, it doesn't have now. And it might need that to fully succeed.
A tightly focused moment in an imaginary cold war naval confrontation, the Incident in question is an example a small thing becoming a big one. This was the big fear in the Soviet/American nuclear buildup. Richard Widmark as the ship's captain is in a intense mode without the snarling excesses that made him a film noir staple. Martin Balsam as the newly arrived doctor, and Sydney Poitier as a congenial photographer both fill in roles of reason and normalcy--the you and me of the situation. And then there are the side characters, and the one impulsive moment that changes everything.
It's hard to call this a great film. The pace and editing, the photography, and the acting are all first class, certainly. The writing on a broad level is fine, the concept in total. On the immediate level, the dialog is good with a slightly predictable edge to many lines. But it works overall, just not brilliantly.
What holds it together for us is a sense of history--the very real fear of atomic annihilation--and it's a history that is thankfully starting to feel a little distant. Not that I think nuclear war is less likely now than then, but that this kind of war, with superpowers toe-to-toe at the brink, is no more. And so something the movie had then, the immediacy of pure terror, the walking out of the theater into the street and looking up with sweat at the sky, it doesn't have now. And it might need that to fully succeed.