Einsatz im Nordatlantik

Despite plenty of wartime propaganda and the usual amount of clichés and other staples of WWII action melodramas, ACTION IN THE NORTH Atlantic is given a boost by some of the best staged action scenes ever featured in a Warner Bros. movie of that era.

The realism is startling considering that special effects then included no computer engineering. The script is basically the story of U.S. Merchant Marine survivors of a battle determined to sink the ship that ruthlessly cut into their lifeboat. The climax has them getting their revenge on the Germans after a fierce battle that concludes with the Americans and their farewell ceremonies to shipmates killed during battle. Bogart is given some flag-waving lines to read and the film concludes with a commentary using FDR's voice to salute the Merchant Marines and their contribution to the war effort.

Lloyd Bacon directs with a firm, vigorous treatment of all the battle scenes and only occasionally does the film slow down when dealing with the domestic front. Julie Bishop does a nice job as Bogart's girlfriend and later wife, while Raymond Massey shares his domestic homecoming with Ruth Gordon as his wife. But the film's merits are chiefly due to the action sequences, which are by far among the best ever featured in a Bogart film.

Action is what you get here...but don't expect anything deep. Bogart fans won't be disappointed. Dane Clark plays his usual hothead role with gusto and Alan Hale is a welcome addition to the supporting cast.

Raymond Massey and Humphrey Bogart as captain and first mate of a merchant marine ship, see their first ship sunk by a German U-boat. They get a second ship and with some of their surviving crew from the first ship join an international convoy taking supplies to the Soviet Union.

From Halifax to Murmansk quite a flotilla of merchant ships from a whole lot of countries that had declared war on the Axis. The convoy was something like a sea going wagon train which was developed because individual ships were easy prey for submarines. The seagoing wagon train got a destroyer escort and they were armed now as well.

The merchant seaman were not technically part of the armed forces. But that didn't mean they weren't seeing a lot of action as Action in the North Atlantic so clearly demonstrates. Bad enough when the Lend lease was to Great Britain, but when we became allies with the Soviets the only places it could go were the ports of Murmansk and Archangel when they were ice free. That meant a voyage along the long Norwegian coast line which was occupied by Germany.

Bogart and Massey give strong portrayals of dedicated merchant seaman whose life is tough enough in peace time. But they certainly have the right stuff in time of war. Some of the crew of their ship is Dane Clark, Sam Levene, Peter Whitney, and Alan Hale who really steals every scene he's in.

Action in the North Atlantic is filled with a lot of the flag waving that characterized Hollywood era World War II films. The derring do heroics are kept to a minimum. The situations the seaman encounter are quite real for the perilous undertaking they were involved in.

It could probably be remade today and maybe with some of today's stars showing a new generation what it was like to be a merchant seaman in World War II>

This comparatively little-known film should have done for the Merchant Sailors of WWII what "The Cruel Sea" did for the image of the Royal Navy. The men who sailed the convoy ships were treated appallingly by the owners of the vessels they crewed, who indeed where quick to institute "retroactive stoppage of pay" clauses upon receiving word of a ship's being lost. They also were subject to verbal --even physical-- abuse by their own countrymen, who routinely mistook them for "Service Shirkers". "Action" is one of the few films that gives them their due.

This film is remarkable on many counts. Not only is the acting rock solid, and the story in itself a fine "sea saga", but the director has managed to avoid many potential pitfalls thrown into in his path by the War (Propaganda?) Department. The obligatory leave-taking scenes are touching, but not maudlin; the even more obligatory "speech-making" is impassioned, but never embarrassingly so. And the Enemy is portrayed as a thoroughly competent if ruthless professional, as dedicated to his own trade as the convoy Sailors are to theirs. (I for one did not find the lack of English "subtitles" a problem --I could pretty well figure out what the U-Boat skipper and his crew were up to.)

To repeat my opening comments,-- this film, though not as well-circulated as "The Cruel Sea", certainly should rank as its equal.

From what my father described this is pretty much the way it was on the Murmansk run. My father was sunk twice on the way to Murmansk the second time with the PQ-17 convoy (The Massacred Convoy). He was Chief Engineer on the maiden voyage of the liberty ship "Daniel Morgan" and was sunk by the German U-88 on July 4th, 1942. After being picked up by a Russian tanker some three days later he and the survivors hid out behind Russian lines until he came back to Boston on The Queen Mary with hundreds of other merchant seaman that had been sunk. The day was October 15th, 1942...the day I was born.

That wasn't the last time he was sunk.

These were battles that saw merchant ships attacked, across the seas like fish in barrels they were tracked, a hidden foe that fought with stealth, their aim to sink the allies wealth, deploying tactics that were tough to counteract. In convoys odds of sinking were reduced, but on occasion isolation was induced, like a lamb that leaves the flock, you were open to be shot, but wise thinking often generates a boost. At its heart there is a little propaganda, encouraging those free to join and clamber, to ride the waves of victory, sailing logistics over sea, there was no reason to abstain, as a bystander.