The Silent Enemy (1958)

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Laurence Harvey in, I think his best role, playing Lionel Kenneth "Buster" Crabb OBE GM. I love this film, based on a true story and a real life hero. Crabb was awarded the George Medal for his work in Gibraltar to disarm mines from British warships based there.There is a great mix of fact and some humour thrown in with the appearance of Sid James as a Chief Petty Officer charged with getting the new frogmen fit for the long and dangerous work they had to undertake. A classic British Black and white war film in every sense.Its also a film close to my heart as my late father actually dived with Lt Cdr. Crabb on HMS Reclaim just before he went missing undertaking secret dives underneath the soviet cruiser Ordzhonikidze in Portsmouth Harbour.Overall a great must watch film for B&W war film fans.

The Brits produced some fine war films in the late 40s and 50s, and this one is watchable. Lawrence Harvey leads a team of underwater demolition men against the Italian frogmen who are attaching mines to ships in the harbor at Gibralter and blowing them up. The climax comes when a large convoy arrives and pauses for a few days before bringing supplies and reenforcements to the Eighth Army in North Africa. The Italian unit, just across the border in Algeciras, Spain, a neutral country, is bound to attack it. Can they be stopped? Harvey and his mates are going to give it a try.This doesn't meet the criteria for polish and effect met by some other films of the period -- say, "The Dam Busters" or "Dunkirk", but if it's long and tiring, it has some things going for it. Lawrence Harvey is surprisingly good at the real-life Lieutenant Crabbe. Sid James is first rate as the Chief Petty Officer who brusquely but kindly teaches the team how to carry on. Dawn Addams, as a Wren officer, is delicious but has little to do. The tension of the training and the missions is leavened with some humor. Addams is leading the team to their quarters in a crumbling old fort. "That's a proper bastion," observes one of the men. James: "Watch your language -- ladies present!" In its early years, the war between the Brits and the Italians was often a gentlemanly affair and that's reflected in this film. We get to know the members of the Italian unit. And when one of their casualties is found by Harvey, the corpse is buried at sea with ritual respect. In North Africa, the Italians surrendered in droves, as many did in Sicily. Not because of cowardice but because Mussolini had gotten the nation into an increasingly unpopular war and because many Italians of the time owed their allegiance less to the state than to primary institutions like the family. In "The Godfather," Sonny Corleone makes the same point when he twits Michael for joining the Marine Corps. There were of course some excellent men fighting for Italy, especially a number of daredevils in the air force.The fronts in North Africa shifted back and forth and captured men from both sides went "in the bag." One was an Italian nobleman. The Italian government offered a ransom for his return -- I forget the amount -- but it was so small that the exalted POW was insulted at the amount and refused to return to Italy. Better to lose freedom than dignity.So, though it's no masterpiece, not "The Cruel Sea," neither is it as bad as some others of the time, like "The Gift Horse." And it has its exciting moments.

The Silent Enemy is a tribute to controversial British war hero Lionel Crabb who later got to be known as Buster after the American swimming champion. It wasn't medals that Crabb did his swimming for, he swam for the very survival of king and country.Laurence Harvey plays the sometimes irascible Crabb who gets assigned to Gibraltar, a key point on the lifeline of the British Empire in the Near and Far East. Holding the mouth of the Mediterranean as it does and still does, Gibraltar by its location has been a non-negotiable item since the British got it 1704. Neutral Spain with its nest of spies on both sides of the rock was giving British shipping fits at the time. The Italians developed the technique of planting limpet stealth mines on British ships so they sink later on, when not in port. Crabb discovers this and applies that old maxim, if you can't beat them, join them. And above all make yourselves than the enemy.Crabb's original assignment is simply to find and dispose of the mines, but he puts together a team of frogmen and they become better than the Italians. Crabb's war on Gibraltar is a personal one because he knows who the Italians are operating over in Spain, he can almost reach out and touch them. But Spanish neutrality was a vexing problem for both the USA and the UK during World War II. MI5 who you would think would be dealing with such matters isn't doing it. It gets to be a personal war with Harvey and Arnoldo Foa playing the Italian frogman team head.Some of Harvey's crew are played by such British cinema veterans as Sid James, Nigel Stock, Alec McCowen, Ian Whittaker, and Michael Craig. John Clements is the Royal Navy Admiral in charge at Gibraltar and the beautiful Dawn Addams plays his efficient WREN secretary. I think she'd like to have gotten something going with Harvey, but in this case Harvey has his mind strictly on the business at hand.Lionel Crabb mysteriously disappeared in Portsmouth harbor in 1956 and a headless, legless, armless trunk was later recovered that could have been him. His disappearance has led to speculation for years that even in the post Soviet Union world hasn't been answered. The only one who's disappearance has gotten more speculation in my lifetime was the Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt.This film which made two years after Crabb's disappearance goes into none of that. It concludes with the landings of the Allied army in Morocco and with Crabb and his small team, literally frustrating the plans of several nations at war with their country. It's that Lionel Crabb that the British people prefer to remember and he's remembered well in this accurately told tale of his exploits. One man in the right spot really can make a difference.

Fond memories of this film as my Dad was one of the commandos who had to swim over to Spain to blow up the dastardly Axis'. Though for a Brit', it is a bit strange saying "which one are you Dad? Are you Sid James?" His memory of the commander was that he was a tad eccentric who slept in a rubber blanket. Then my Dad has lots of old recollections of World War 2, Russian Convoys, North Africa, serving on a Free French vessel (it had been re-fitted in America so had an ice-cream maker on board and as well as the British Navy ration of Rum got the French ration of Wine as well) and behind enemy lines in South East Asia. This film is the only one I know of of his own exploits though.