I Conquer the Sea!

In Newfoundland, where they still go a-whaling, Dennis Morgan and Steffi Duna are in love. He's a great harpooner. When he loses his right arm, though, he feels useless and Miss Duna falls in love with his brother, Douglas Walton.

The visuals are good in this cheap picture, and the story is a sound one -- goodness knows it's been done ten thousand times. However, the performances are utterly discordant, and the reasons are obvious: Morgan speaks in the same sort of accents that he will for the next twenty years, Walton, as his brother, speaks in the fake-English style of stage folks, and Miss Duna's Hungarian accent is unmistakable -- and she is supposed to be a Portuguese girl named Rosita Gonzales!

It's the sort of sloppiness that the short budgets of Gower Gulch producers couldn't afford to fix. All they could do was hope that when it got to the audiences, no one would notice. Well, I noticed.

Alpha Home Entertainment has provided a worthwhile service to cinéastes with its release of this seldom-seen film that belongs to the genre of Forgotten Cinema, a well-handled and dramatically constructed mood piece that offers an absorbing scenario, above standard playing, and splendid footage of North Atlantic whale hunting with small boats. Tommy Ashley (Stanley Morner) makes good use of his strong right arm to clear advantage, being the most skilled harpooner of the Newfoundland fishing village wherein he resides with his august minister father Caleb (George Cleveland), along with his mother and brother Leonard (Douglas Walton) while taking steps to wed beautiful Rosita (Steffi Duna) who is from a local Portuguese settlement. However, he may not have an unencumbered claim upon Rosita's heart as she has not yet made a choice between Tommy and his brother, this creating tension amid the three in addition to a feeling of suspense for a viewer, since both men are of high moral character. While relentlessly in pursuit of a breaching whale as part of an attacking long boat crew, Tommy's right arm is torn away, but this dire mishap does not end his duties as a harpooner because he immediately after trains himself to throw accurately with his left, this achievement raising his spirits enormously; but, will his handicap affect Rosita's selection of a mate? A couple of back stories appear within the scenario, one involving bias against Portuguese immigrants, another of a boatmate of Tommy who wishes to succeed the now one-armed man as harpooner, but neither is treated in an elaborate manner, while an unusually perceptive depiction of the romantic contest waged among the love triangle members is correctly placed to the fore. There is a grim tone to the work that quite neatly adds to its operatic essence, with several vocal episodes featuring musical drama schooled tenor Morner (later to be known as Dennis Morgan during his years working for Warner Brothers), and a pleasing solo dance offered by Duna (who had performed with the Budapest Opera before her film career began) as she prepares for her espousal announcement. Perhaps the most singular design for a house of worship in all of cinematic history is the whaling muralled chapel interior created here by art director F. Paul Sylos, that includes a long boat pulpit! Morner/Morgan easily wins the acting honors with his strong turn that helps define the script's romantic ingredients for a well-directed film that profits from a nicely balanced storyline, therewith marking its distinct divergence from hackneyed tales that are a hallmark of the greatest portion of its feature film contemporaries.

"I Conquer the Sea!" is a great example of a film that was made by a so-called 'Poverty Row Studio' and yet it manages to work exceptionally well despite the lower budget and lesser-known stars. The only big star (Dennis Morgan) was NOT a star at the time the film was made and he goes by his real name, Stanley Morner. Aside from him, the rest are relative unknowns. Most of them did a great job, though the star, Steffi Duna, was very weak.

The film is set in a whaling town. While whaling and whalers are not politically correct in the much more sensitive 21st century, the film is a valuable piece of history--giving us some actual footage of what it was like to hunt whales for a living in the 1930s--when the industry was nearly dead.

Tommy Ashley (Morgan--in his first film) is in love with a Portuguese-American lady, Rosita (Duna). However, her love for him seems a bit less intense. She cares about him but doesn't seem in love with him. Still, she does care about him and agrees to marry him. The problem is that in the meantime, Tommy's nice brother, Leonard (Douglas Walton) is really, really sweet and soon Rosita falls head over heels for Leonard and vice-versa. But, Leonard is very loyal to his brother and cannot allow himself to fall for Rosita. And, to make it worse, Tommy gets maimed in a whaling accident and the notion of Rosita and Leonard getting married is too much for them to do and Rosita resigns herself to marrying Tommy and not the man she really loves. However, nice-guy Tommy learns about this and decides to take matters in his own hands...I mean hand.

The film works well because the stock footage of whaling is integrated extremely well into the film. Additionally, there was a really nice reverence for the men and their work that made the film rather inspiring and sweet. Well worth seeing and nearly good enough to earn an 8.