We Dive at Dawn

Any film about WWII made during WWII by a British production company has no latter-day peer in my opinion, respectfully. The confluence of so many things near and dear to my heart are in At Dawn We Dive: as a descendant of Admiral Horatio Nelson and student of all aspects of World War Two and particularly naval warfare, I favor depictions of subs and action in the North Atlantic and especially those which include the German side of things. For those unacquainted with target priorities, an attack on an enemy warship is the greatest event that a submarine can hope to encounter and such a rare opportunity would develop surprisingly similarly to what we see here. The pacing is deliberate and typical of the works coming out of the Ealing, Rank and British-Gaumont studios back in the day: frankly I prefer its quieter, more cerebral approach for its humanity and realism that engages far better than any over-produced Hollywood movie ever could. This reminds me of Powell and Pressburger's The 49th Parallel thanks to the powerfully persuasive Eric Portman, a favorite of mine. John Mills receives second billing and a smaller font in the titles, so this is clearly meant to be Mr. Portman's film but the whole cast shines. As for the title sequence, am I the only one who is utterly charmed by Gainsborough Production's lovely pre-CGI Gainsborough Girl?

I very much agree with the comment about the verisimilitude of the control room dialogue and action during the torpedo shoot. However, the scenes that really struck me most forcibly as realistic were those in the engine room during the episode where the Baltic A/S net was penetrated. The mechanician operating the electric motor was (in my opinion!) definitely not an actor - he was a matelot doing his regular job, and he was obviously jolly proud of it too. The repetition of these "ahead/astern" scenes suggests that the director was as fascinated as I was. The film is and will remain well worth watching for scenes like these. And for our US friends who find the dialogue difficult - well, I often use the subtitles option when watching modern Hollywood action films, like "Get Shorty". Doesn't stop my enjoyment, and I can then understand about 90% on a second unaided viewing!

In most US made submarine action movies the process of torpedoing the enemy appears fairly straightforward and painless. Clark Gable, Cary Grant and Tyrone Power never seem to miss. In this movie one gets the sense that it is not so easy to sink an enemy ship at range. In this movie during the battle scene the Coxswain can't seem to keep the boat level in the water, the first officer forgets to read the bearing, someone else seems to be asleep at the switch at a vital moment. This little bit of realisim was appreciated by this viewer.

The best line in the movie is when the cook bites into a dinner sausage prepared for the crew grimmaces and comments "No wonder they stopped dog racing" or words to that effect.

I am a fan of submarine books and movies. Most of the movies are crap. I happened to stumble on this movie on UCSD-TV (San Diego) last night and was instantly enthralled. So much more realistic (IMHO) than the typical (American) submarine movie. Compare to "Destination Tokyo" (which I like), for instance. In that movie everything is bright and shiny and relatively uncramped. In WDaD I was thinking "whoa, Das Boot but British". Yeah, it's not perfect but I (like a previous reviewer) was impressed by the portrayal of the difficult submerged attack on the "Brandenburg".

So is this where the old "shoot a bunch of junk out of a torpedo tube so they'll think we're sunk" ploy actually originated?

Anyhoo, on my (short) list of good WWII submarine movies, I would have to put this in the top 5.

The submarine used was NOT Varangian! 'It' was in fact two boats, P614 and P615, both built for Turkey by Vickers Armstorng at Barrow-in-Furness but kept hold of by the Royal Navy for the duration of the war. P615 was sunk but P614 was eventually delivered in 1945.

The confusion no doubt arose because someone looked up P61 (as I did) and found Varangian! When in fact, the last digit of both P614 and P615 was in fact just painted out....

There are some extremely realistic moments in the film. These Turkish boats were very similar to the S-class. As no S-class submarines survive, the shots of them (as P61) and of the depot ship "Forth" form part of an interesting record now, as well as an excellent film.