It's a feature story from the Crown Film Unit. A merchant ship has been sunk, and its 22 survivors under P.J. Pyecraft wait for the Royal Navy to send out a ship to rescue them. It's done, but there's a U-Boat whose captain knows the situation, and is waiting with the boat's last two torpedoes to pick off the unsuspecting warship.
It's one of those stiff-upper-lip movies, with all the facilities that the British authorities can give it. What makes it stand out from the crowd is Jack Cardiff's Technicolor camerawork: not just the portrait shots that offer noble visages under pressure, but the blues: the azure blue of the sky, the green-blue of the sea, and the steel blue of the ships' interiors.... and occasional snatches of that dark, velvety midnight blue that seems unique to British Technicolor, with the pink-faced, unblinking faces of the men looking at radios and dials and such. Cardiff's abilities with Technicolor have never been matched, and here his camera paints the scenes like Rembrandt, if Rembrandt ever worked in blue; I don't recall he ever did.
It's one of those stiff-upper-lip movies, with all the facilities that the British authorities can give it. What makes it stand out from the crowd is Jack Cardiff's Technicolor camerawork: not just the portrait shots that offer noble visages under pressure, but the blues: the azure blue of the sky, the green-blue of the sea, and the steel blue of the ships' interiors.... and occasional snatches of that dark, velvety midnight blue that seems unique to British Technicolor, with the pink-faced, unblinking faces of the men looking at radios and dials and such. Cardiff's abilities with Technicolor have never been matched, and here his camera paints the scenes like Rembrandt, if Rembrandt ever worked in blue; I don't recall he ever did.