Die Frau im U-Boot

Paramount, at the height of its sophistication in the early 30's, could recycle its sets from MOROCCO and fashion a stylish production out of a passable triangle melodrama. Unfulfilled wife Tallulah Bankhead --frustrated at home, humiliated in front of her social set by her pathologically jealous husband -- stumbles into an Arab marketplace crowded with whirling dervishes, and into the arms of Gary Cooper for a romantic liaison under the desert stars. Conflicts ensue, of course, and then all three find themselves on a crippled submarine.

Viewers who know Tallulah Bankhead only from her caricatured role in LIFEBOAT will be startled by her intensity and bruised glamour: slouching in Travis Banton gowns, she looks sometimes like Garbo, sometimes like "Margo Channing". Meanwhile, she gives a crash course in how to hold a melodrama together, commanding every scene, inflecting every line with subtle nuances. When she must deal with menacing Charles Laughton, the air between them vibrates with tension. Laughton [billed as "the eminent English character actor"] does his share as well, but he seems mannered in a familiar way, a dry run for his Captain Bligh.

Only the radiant young Cary Grant in a dazzling naval uniform steals attention from the leading lady in a brief appearance. Gary Cooper, though persuasive as the romantic hero, soon gets submerged in a disappointingly shallow character.

The eye is seduced by cameraman Charles Lang's repertoire of shadows, the heart is stirred by a star performance, but in the end the head may resist: the terse dialogue tries for Hemingway but remains stubbornly pedestrian and remarkably humorless: the script owes its sole laugh to Bankhead's line reading while buying a billiard cue. The devil is in the dialogue!

Devil and the Deep (1932)

*** (out of 4)

Diana Sturm (Tallulah Bankhead) is married to submarine Cmdr. Charles Sturm (Charles Laughton) and everyone sees her as a bad person. The truth of the matter is that Charles is extremely abusive to her and will stop at nothing to destroy any man's life he feels she is attracted to. One night while running away from the abuse, Diana meets Lt. Sempter (Gary Cooper) and the two have a relationship, which soon leads to disaster.

DEVIL AND THE DEEP isn't a very well-known movie and I must admit that I'm quite shocked about that. I had never really heard of the film until recently and it's rather amazing because you've got not only Bankhead, Laughton and Cooper but you've also got a young Cary Grant in a nice early role. Four legendary stars from Hollywood's Golden Age and you mention the title to most film buffs and they won't be familiar with it.

Whatever the reason people don't know the film, it's really too bad because it's actually pretty good. The greatest thing about the film is the ending, which I won't spoil but it takes place on the submarine and there's no question that it's quite tense and rather claustrophobic. Director Marion Gering really does a nice job with this entire sequence and while some of the special effects shots aren't the greatest, the overall impact of the scene is very good. The film does get off to a rather slow start but it quickly picks up.

The performances are certainly the main reason to watch the picture with Bankhead delivering a fine one. She's very good in the role of the abusive wife and I really enjoyed her performance when she had to show the fear she feels for her husband. I thought the actress was very believable as an abused woman. Cooper was also very stoic in his "hero" type of role. I thought the two of them shared some very good chemistry and that helped their relationship. Grant appears early on in the picture and he's very good as well. As for Laughton, he gets a very special screen credit and he certainly deserves it as he is great as the crazed man who will stop at nothing to hurt his wife and any man who likes her. By watching this film it's easy to see why he would eventually be cast in MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY.

At just seventy-five minutes the film has a very good pace and there's no question that it's one worth watching.

Cary Grant's charm and looks he displayed in his first movie, 1932's "This Is The Night," earned him a role in his next feature film, his second, as a potential love-interest to the wife of a naval ship commander in August 1932's "Devil and the Deep." Grant plays Lt. Jaeckel under the command of Charles Strum (Charles Laughton), a deeply flawed and extremely jealous husband to Diana Sturm (Talluhlah Bankhead). Based on Maurice Larrouy's novel, 'Sirenes et Tritons," Jaeckel sparks Strum's insane jealousy, which is unfounded by his wife's disinterest in the lieutenant. Jaeckel is quickly shipped out early in the film and is replaced by another lieutenant, Sempter (Gary Cooper), who it turns out gets kissy-wissy with Diana. Actress Bankhead said she accepted the role because she really wanted to get physically close to Cooper.

"Devil and the Deep" was Hollywood's first detailed look at the insides of a submarine. Once the U-Boat's commander Strum has his wife and her officer boyfriend Sempter underway in the underwater sub, he sets forth his plans to kill the lovers, taking along his crew for a suicidal maneuver. Laughton is clearly the star in the movie: the actor's menacing behavior fits the deranged Strum perfectly to a tee. The English-born and raised Laughton began acting on the stage in 1926 while dabbling in film during the late 1920s before securing his first major role in "Devil and the Deep." Tallulah Bankhead, primarily a stage actress, found acting in movies to be a complete bore. Her first two years in Hollywood, 1931 and 1932, were marked with her yearning to return to the live stage. "Devil and the Deep" was her second-to-last picture before reemerging on the screen twelve years later in Alfred Hitchcock's 1944 "Lifeboat."

"Devil and the Deep" marked the return to Hollywood for Gary Cooper. Burnt out and drained from an aggressive schedule of acting in ten movies within a two-year span, Cooper suffered from anemia and jaundice from his poor dietary habits. He decided to make a break from Los Angeles, feeling depressed and lonely. Reconnecting with an acquaintance, American heiress Dorothy Taylor, now a countess living in Rome, Italy, Cooper rehabilitated himself with her good food and great advice on nutrition. Developing a continental appreciation for the arts and customs of Europe, the actor's rough Western edges were smoothed out by the countess' patient tutorship. She took him on a ten-week big game safari hunting trip in Kenya, where he bagged a variety of trophy animals. His love of the wilderness kick in during the trip. In his role as the submarine's second-in-command, Cooper appears more comfortable and restrained in his role as the leader of the mutiny when it becomes obvious its commander is attempting to kill everyone on board.

"Devil and The Deep" is the only movie, besides a brief appearance in 1933's "Alice in Wonderland," Cooper and Grant ever shared credits in the same movie. This was a bit ironic since Grant had Cooper in mind when he selected his stage name Cary after the actor from Montana.

... and in fact only the last thirty minutes or so has much suspense or tension.

Commander Charles Sturm (Charles Laughton) of the U. S. Navy is well liked by his men and their wives. However, his own wife Diana (Tallulah Bankhead) is not well liked. She appears snooty and glum. In fact she is just a very sad person because her husband is insanely jealous without cause and even violent sometimes. In fact he has been to a doctor and is just plain insane and delusional, and this has killed what love she had for him. He even has a fellow officer, Lt. Jaekel (Cary Grant) transferred for inefficiency just because he is so sure Jaekel and his wife are involved. His wife even has an impromptu conversation with Jaekel with her husband listening nearby to prove it's not true but he remains unconvinced.

So Diana takes a walk through the North African town in which they are stationed, meets a stranger, and gets romantically involved with that stranger. What she doesn't know is that the man is her husband's new second in command to replace the one he transferred, Lt. Sempter (Gary Cooper). So Sturm's old jealousies begin to rise up again, except for once he is right. And a submarine is a terrible place in which to play out a love triangle. Complications ensue.

This is noteworthy for the once-in-a-lifetime cast. Laughton gets an "introducing" credit as being that "noted British character actor". Laughton goes big and florid with his performance, Cooper gives his normal "aw shucks" performance, and Bankhead plays it quiet and sullen. Bankhead is best when she's the one handing out the withering one-liners, so the film may have worked better with a more conventional and vulnerable leading lady.

Devil and the Deep contains a fascinating performance from Charles Laughton as a submarine commander going nuts with the conviction that his sultry wife (Tallulah Bankhead) is cheating on him first with Cary Grant and then Gary Cooper.

The physical production features a claustrophobic studio recreation of a North African town (reminiscent of Von Sternberg's "Morocco" but without the dazzling shadow play), a romantic scene in a starlit desert oasis (said to have been filmed in an actual desert but looking exactly like a painted backdrop) and finally the laughable spectacle of toy boats bobbing around in a tank of water that we're supposed to believe is the Mediterranean.

Bankhead, like other female stars of that historical moment, is made up and coiffed to look like a Garbo clone. The style suits her without overwhelming her innate, distinctive qualities of voice and manner. Laughton's performance prefigures his later Captain Bligh in Mutiny on the Bounty and Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. I prefer his work here to his Bligh, which was sometimes too messily overwrought. This is also the second 1932 film (the other being "Payment Deferred") in which he plays dementia with mad laughter. Cooper is wooden and awkward (and handsome) as usual and Grant does well in a smallish supporting role.