The Sea Shall Not Have Them

As far as i am aware there are really only 2 British films about Air-Sea rescue ,this film and For Those In Peril.I believe that the earlier film is superior not just because it stars David Farrar who is far better than Anthony Steel,but it has a far more realistic feel.This film is hurt by its inept process work.Nearly every scene featuring Anthony Steel and most of those in the dinghy are clearly shot either on a sound stage or the studio tank and in my view this severely detracts from the realistic feel the film needs to impart.Also at the climax we have the rather strange effect of the boat being shrouded in fog and then in a blazing sun.Quite odd.We have all the usual banter of the lower ranks with some fine performances from a great cast.Incidentally Bonar Cellano who plays an airman and Michael Balfour ,an engineer,were great friends in real life.Alas they had a car crash,Balfour survived but Cellano did not/A real loss to the British cinema as he had made his home here.

Survivors from a crashed aircraft including a commodore holding top secret information (Redgrave) are adrift in the North Sea in a small dinghy. There only hope is the Air Sea Rescue service and Anthony Steele and his crew of likely British character actors set out to find them.

Enjoyable enough adventure which is at its best when focussing on the crew of the rescue boat, whilst the more intense dinghy, will they, won't they scenes are a little dull and repetitive. It's a solid British cast of familiar faces all nicely type cast as frightfully stiff upper lip upper or 'cor blimey guvnor' lower classes facing every conceivable mishap on the way, helped especially by Nigel Patrick, spot on as the tough but likeable flight sergeant and Anthony Steele as the man in charge.

This tribute to Air Sea Rescue is mainly remembered now for Noel Coward's bad taste observation when contemplating a poster for this film "I don't see why not, everyone else has!" There's certainly very few women in it (which must have suited Dirk Bogarde just fine), although somehow Joan Sims is in it.

Like Hitchcock's 'Lifeboat' the cast are cast adrift in an open boat with Michael Redgrave in the Miss Froy part (the MacGuffin taking the form of a attaché case filled with "formula blue-prints and so on").

Nigel Patrick is cast against type as a rasping flight sergeant who snarls at new boys "I eat blood and drink rivets!". The music of course is by Malcolm Arnold, who never seems to be taking things as seriously as the cast.

During the Second World War, an RAF transport is shot down over the North Sea. Four men are on a dinghy, hoping for rescue as they drift closer to occupied Holland. Back at headquarters of the RAF Search and Rescue Force, the work is being coordinated. Meanwhile, one of the launches taking part in the search has mechanical problems.

That rarely happens under ordinary circumstances in the movies, right? Things work until the actual battle begins, and then the engineer - invariably Scottish - puts things together with string and old cutlery. This is not that sort of movie. It's pacing is odd. It's crisis and routine, and nothing gets done, until the last minute, just like in real life. People talk oddly. Dirk Bogarde, one of the downed fliers, is shrill.

Unfortunately, this ambitious way of telling a story doesn't really work to maintain interest. The characters are either blanks, like Michael Redgrave, who holds the Maguffin, or unappealing. It's an interesting experiment, but like many of them, it doesn't prove its worth.

Good cast, though.

When much was made of the R.A.F.Squadrons flying countless missions against the enemy, and rightly so, it is refreshing that `The Sea Shall Not Have Them' shows the work done by the R.A.F. Air Sea Rescue crews. Anthony Steel plays the skipper of 2561, a M.T.B. assigned to locate and rescue a Hudson bomber that has crash landed in the north sea. On board the plane along with the rest of the crew, is a V.I.P. with vital German rocket secrets. The film then follows two strands, one showing the air crew ( including a young Dirk Bogarde) slowly freezing on the escape dingy, and the M.T.B. crew fighting bad weather, engine failure, and in one incredible scene, a new crew member sets fire to the galley. The ending although predictable ,is nevertheless gripping, and the film will rank along ,with the best of the war movies made in the 50's.