We Dive at Dawn (1943)

Simply Perfect

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

A Gainsborough Picture, made at Gaumont British Studios, Shepherd's Bush. Neither copyrighted nor theatrically released in the U.S.A. Released in the U.K. through General Film Distributors: 28 June 1943. Presented by J. Arthur Rank. London opening at the Odeon, Leicester Square: 20 May 1943. Australian release through 20th Century-Fox: 7 September 1944 (sic). 8,557 feet. 95 minutes. (NTSC available on a VCI DVD; PAL available on a Simply Media DVD or an ITV Silver Collection disc). SYNOPSIS: A British submarine receives orders to sink a Nazi battleship. NOTES: Made with the co-operation of the Admiralty and the officers and men of His Majesty's submarines. The Navy did not think the original Williams-Valentine script "sufficiently authentic", so Launder was engaged. He revised the script with the help of an experienced submarine officer.COMMENT: No greater contrast can be found than that between the war- time propaganda movies made by England and the USA. The Hollywood product is full of false heroics and exaggeratedly racist bravado ("One of us is worth ten of them"), glamorized action and an enormous amount of dame-chasing on leave. The British movies are soberly realistic to a fault (you actually go away from "We Dive At Dawn" with more than a passing knowledge of the interior workings of a submarine); little attempt is made to glamorize war and give it a glossy sheen of high adventure (although there is plenty of tension, war is usually shown in all its horror and futility and mindless waste); whilst the Germans are invariably presented as lacking the quick wits of the English, they are still a force to be taken extremely seriously; and leaves are usually spent quietly with families in environs far removed from high- stepping night clubs.On the other hand, both American and British war pictures usually devote a great deal of their screen time to filling in the characters of a select group of officers and men. Whilst the Hollywood writers often fall back on stereotypes and stock characters, their British counterparts are more successful in presenting a diverse and more interesting range of personnel. The English have never been afraid of eccentrics and non-conformists, whereas to an American scriptwriter, any character who doesn't conform simply has to redeem himself by some heroic act in the final reel. The British certainly believe in team spirit, but the Americans demand total subjection to predetermined rules of conduct."We Dive At Dawn" is an excellent example of the British school. Well-rounded, interesting characters are soberly, and realistically acted by a large group of fine players with whom we can sympathize and identify. A great deal of the action is fascinatingly concerned with the details of submarine command. And the film has been put together with admirable competence and professionalism but without overt flashiness or unrealistic special effects. Asmittedly, "We Dive at Dawn" takes a fair while to get cracking, what with all the boat-side camaraderie as the various characters are introduced. In these early sections of the film we feel too that the two star performances, Portman (top-billed, though his is the subsidiary role) and Mills are somewhat lacking in depth. In fact they both seem too brusque to be totally convincing. However, Mills and Portman do settle down and grow as the story progresses. And some of the other below-decks business, particularly the running gag with the Arabella tattoo, also becomes more enthralling and/or amusing. Of curse, once the action really starts, with its surprising semi- documentary insistence on all the details and actual mechanics of the attack, this movie achieves a realism, a verisimilitude, a naturalistic tautness and tension worthy of Asquith's best work. Even Jack Cox's drab, gray-toned lighting photography comes into its own. Topped by an all-action climax.

"We Dive at Dawn" is a good, war-time action movie: heroic but no so jingoistic to be unpalatable to modern audiences. The fictional Royal Navy submarine 'Sea Tiger' goes to sea after the 'Brandenburg', a fictional German battleship. The first third of the movie, which is mostly 'home-front' scenes following the crew as they go on leave then find their leave cancelled is a bit slow, but the movie picks up when the 'Sea Tiger' leaves on the hunt. When the pray is sighted, the movie slides into the classic 'cat and mouse' game between the submarine and the battleship and its escorting destroyers. The stalking of the 'Brandenburg' is very well done as are the scenes of misleading and evading the destroyers. After the skirmish and short on fuel, the submarine heads for a Danish port to steal some diesel, a 'commando' segment that I found much less interesting than the scenes at sea. Likely due to its mid-war filming, the movies suffers a bit in realism (e.g. the German soldiers seem to be using British machine guns). I was intrigued to find out that there really were radio-equipped 'rescue floats' that had been dropped into the channel by the Germans for the use of downed Luftwaffe aircrew. The fact that the Sea Tiger encounters one of these floats that happens to be occupied by three Germans (one of whom knows a key fact about the Brandenburg's sailing) who are then taken prisoner seems a bit of a stretch. Given the cramped conditions of a WW2 submarine, I can't imagine that there would be much room for prisoners but, even at the height of the Battle for the Atlantic and a year after the Blitz, I doubt British audiences would have accepted the likely outcome of such an encounter in real life (i.e. the Germans know too much to be left on the float but taking them prisoner is not feasible, so...). Overall: a worthy entry into the "submarine movie" genre and a good example of British war-time movies.

I watched this expecting to see the usual British stiff upper lip stereotypes and was surprised to find the dialogue remarkably natural and tinged with black humour. It was more like Eastenders Goes to Sea than In Which We Serve. The scenes during the approach and attack are remarkably realistic in their depiction of a fighting ship and the stuff ups and banter among the ship's company (well at least based on my service in the 1970s). Some of the throwaway lines are very witty ("I'm not joining the Band of Hope just to please some greasy fish fryer!). My only complaint is that they didn't show what happened to the Irish coxswain and his bride to be, or the tattooed PO and his "I Love Arabella" tattoo!

This movie is all about reality, submarine warfare in WW2 was not a clean precise science. There were no computers giving exact enemy details, there was no precise instrumentation to 100% control the sub. Not all the crew went to fight with a song in their heart, and a smile on their dial.People with expectations of seeing a "pretty war" in this movie will be grossly disappointed, .............. GOOD, they deserve to be disappointed, they deserve to have reality shoved into their face.War is not clean, exact, fought by people about to break into song. It is endured by scared, cold/burnt, hungry, desperate people willing to do anything to survive."We Dive at Dawn" is a fine example portraying a desperate situation needing desperate actions.