Alerte sur le Vaillant

This was one of a number of Italian WWII-set collaborations with English-speaking countries, a couple of which I watched recently – namely THE CAPTIVE CITY (1962) and TORPEDO BAY (1963). While the handling is fairly dull, the film's main plot develops into a sustained suspense situation as a British vessel (commandeered by stiff-upper-lipped John Mills) is planted with explosive charges by Italian naval officer Ettore Manni and his (wounded) companion, who are then imprisoned on the ship itself after refusing to give details of their mission including the whereabouts of the bomb itself.

An underwater search at night fails to reap the desired results and Mills – with the help of officer Robert Shaw (who's married to an Italian girl) – determines to retrieve the necessary information which could save the ship and the life of more than a thousand men on it. Doctor Liam Redmond opposes his treatment of the P.O.W.s, but remains on board to cure the injured man even after the vessel has been evacuated. The explosion eventually occurs early the next morning – when the ship was scheduled to set sail for war duty; the film, then, ends with Mills awarding Manni for his integrity and loyalty to his cause three years after the fact.

As I said, the film is generally interesting (like the same director's DON'T BOTHER TO KNOCK [1952], it's mostly confined to a single setting) though the interrogation/confrontation scenes do get repetitive; it's also bogged down by resistible comic relief provided by two marines appointed to guard the saboteurs.

P.S. I'd love to revisit Mills' previous effort with Baker (in all, they worked six times together) i.e. the eccentric psychological Western THE SINGER NOT THE SONG (1961) – which I acquired some time ago.

What an intetesting topic for this British war film showing some Italian frogmen, vs of course the Royal Navy sailors. Yes, so surprising from an UK war film production, focusing in Italian, even if you have also a British part in the second half of the film. So far, during the fifties, British film industry offered us only solid war movies speaking of the British effort against Axis evil forces. I have seen Italian film from the fifties and sixties, speaking of the Italian Navy, combat swimmers, combat frogmen, a domain where Italian were really good. The only one; ask the Afrika Korps members concerning the war in Lybia...So, yes, this is a truly amazing and also so rare feature. Since my childhood I have never succeeded in finding this film, until today. TORPEDO BAY, made one year later, as also a British Italian war movie, where the main English role was held by James Mason instead of John Mills here. And director Roy Ward Baker already gave us another sea drama adventure yarn several years earlier with A NIGHT TO REMEMBER, about the Titanic shipwreck.

Tucked within the brief window of early 1960s Anglo-Italian cinematic collaborations, the film emerges as a precise, restrained entry in the microgenre of special mission World War II narratives-specifically, those focused on the underwater sabotage tactics pioneered by the Italian Decima Flottiglia MAS. Distinct from the sweeping battle epics of the era, the film adopts a contained, almost theatrical structure that builds tension not through kinetic spectacle but through compression-of space, of information, of moral certainty. It unfolds almost entirely aboard a Royal Navy vessel, where silence, suspicion, and discipline are rendered more volatile than gunfire.

Much of this effect is due to the director's assured hand, already evident in A Night to Remember (1958), a dramatization of the Titanic disaster renowned for its calm, procedural portrayal of impending catastrophe. In both films, the director demonstrates a rare ability to maintain high-stakes narrative pressure without resorting to cinematic excess. Here, as in the Titanic drama, the viewer is made to feel the weight of systems under strain-be they bureaucratic, mechanical, or human. There is a sense of slow, methodical dread as characters move through tight corridors under the shadow of unseen danger.

Visually, the film aligns itself with the sober aesthetic of mid-century European war cinema. The black-and-white cinematography, far from feeling antiquated, suits the subject: it renders the naval interiors in stark tonal contrasts that heighten the claustrophobia and moral ambiguity of the situation. There is no warmth, no saturation, no visual flourish-only the cold geometry of steel, uniform, and restraint. This stripped-down visual approach places the focus squarely on atmosphere, allowing gestures, silences, and framing to carry the drama more than any technical bravado.

The film avoids sentimentality and spectacle. The tension arises not from battle scenes but from the persistent, procedural nature of uncertainty. There is an unspoken economy to the mise-en-scène: characters moving with purpose, machinery humming in the background, the vessel itself becoming a kind of floating pressure chamber. These details are not ornament but integral to the film's language of suspense.

What situates the film firmly within its historical moment is not only its subject matter but its production context. Created during the height of Cold War anxieties, amid the Cuban Missile Crisis and NATO realignments, the film reflects an effort to narrate wartime antagonisms through a contemporary lens of cooperation. The choice to frame the Italian combat divers not as simplistic antagonists but as disciplined, ideologically driven military professionals is both narratively effective and politically resonant. These were former enemies now reframed as partners in European stability, and the film's tone-measured, respectful, and devoid of jingoism-suggests an intention well beyond entertainment.

Within this frame, the film bears useful comparison to titles like Torpedo Bay (1963), another British-Italian collaboration centered on tension aboard a naval vessel. Italian productions such as I sette dell'Orsa Maggiore (1953), Siluri umani (1954), and Uomini sul fondo (1941) share thematic similarities, though often from a more nationalistic perspective. All draw from real operations conducted by the Decima MAS, where stealth, endurance, and sacrifice defined a unique kind of naval warfare far removed from conventional depictions of battle. The film aligns more closely with the tone of Torpedo Bay, sharing its reserved tempo and focus on mutual respect under duress.

The mood, however, is not uninterrupted. The film occasionally diverts into comic relief, inserting moments of tonal dissonance that dilute the carefully cultivated tension. These intrusions feel out of step with the austere rhythm established elsewhere and momentarily break the film's disciplined immersion.

Sound design and editing mirror the thematic restraint. The minimal use of music, the rhythmic ambient noise of shipboard life, and the careful pacing of cuts all serve to sustain a mood of compressed suspense. The final act unfolds with an air of inevitability rather than crescendo, underscoring the film's preference for fatalism over catharsis.

Rather than attempting to summarize the war or dramatize its larger movements, the film isolates a single, covert episode and distills it to its elemental tensions. It is a film of watchfulness and pressure, where the absence of visible action heightens the stakes. This narrative economy, paired with a clear visual language and an acute awareness of historical context, makes it a rare entry in the genre-one that privileges psychological realism and technical precision over mythology or scale. In doing so, it honors not only the specific story it evokes, but a broader wartime reality where duty and silence were often more decisive than violence.

I have long admired Roy Ward Baker's uncluttered directing style. THE VALIANT presents further evidence thereof. He makes the most of the rather claustrophobic atmosphere arising from filming within the confines of a British Navy vessel.

The acting, in particular by John Mills, Robert Shaw and Ettore Manni, is extremely believable, truly first rate.

The one aspect of the film that impressed me least - in fact even annoyed me - was the script. I realize that the film was probably made on the basis of some real incident in a Royal Navy vessel, but the same ideas are flogged to death, the Britis trying to find out where the limpet mine was placed and when it would explode, and the Italian POWs refusing to give that info.

Mills (playing Capt Morgan) delivers solidly as ship skipper trying to save the vessel and the human lives on it, but his determination to keep a wounded Italian away from hospital treatment so that he too would feel the bomb threat detracts from the sympathy that someone in his position would normally attract.

Anyway, it is worth watching. 6/10.