Affondate la Bismarck!

The British have made war and historical movies with an unrivaled consistency of quality, and Sink the Bismarck is no exception. The details are meticulous, the casting first-rate (except for a hokey voice-impersonation of Churchill), and the battle sequences marked by accuracy and fine special effects.

This otherwise fine film is marred, however, by the false depiction of one of the major characters, Admiral Lutjens, commander of the Bismarck. In the film, he is stereotyped as the typical Nazi - a Hitler sycophant, careerist and wild-eyed fanatic. This was most certainly not the historical Lutjens, who was by no means a Nazi fanatic. Lutjens was a naval hero from World War I, who served out of duty and dedication, not Nazi conviction. (Lutjens protected Jews under his command, and members of his family were in trouble for their anti-Nazi views.) This is at complete odds with his depiction in Sink the Bismarck, which I find inexcusable, given that the above information was certainly available to the production. In fact, an accurate depiction of Lutjens would have, in my opinion, added interest to the plot.

Nevertheless, Sink the Bismarck is eminently watchable and a fine addition to any war movie collection, if you bear in mind the above caveat.

This movie is a well crafted and gripping depiction of British attempts to locate and destroy the German battleship Bismarck during World War II. It is told from the viewpoint of sailors aboard vessels from both sides and also the British naval command headquarters. I have little knowledge of naval history so am in no position to comment regarding historical accuracy.

Personally, I found most compelling the strategy and tension within the Admiralty War Headquarters in London, especially the personal depiction of the coordinator of this operation. Kenneth More convincingly plays Captain Jonathan Shepard, who lost his own wife earlier in an air raid and has a son who is himself a naval pilot involved in the battle to sink the Bismarck. Shepard's relationship with the lovely but very professional female naval officer Davis is well captured. There is also a moving portrait of Shepard's restrained response to unfolding news regarding his son. Though there is engaging battle drama at sea, it's the character portrayal of this stiff upper lip British officer that made the movie for me.

The German battleship Bismark was one of the finest warships ever built. She carried 8 15-inch guns and a powerful secondary battery and could make 30 knots. It wasn't one of the biggest or most powerful battleships ever built. The Japanese had the Yamato and Mushashi towards the end of the war, juggernauts with 18-inch cannons. There's a limit to gigantism of course, and in the case of battleships it had to do with whether they could fit physically through the Panama Canal, a concern the Japanese had long put behind them. So the Bismark wasn't the sort of sacred monster that sheer size would make her. But she LOOKED absolutely great. Sleek, well balanced, with her superstructure done the way an architect might have done it, not an engineer. She looked built for speed, and endurance too. For an example of the opposite trend, take a look at Rodney or Nelson. More powerfully armed, with 9 16-inch guns carried in three turrets, all set forward of the superstructure. Man, that is one ugly design. And, more than that, Bismarck's crew were highly trained and she was equipped with one of the world's best optical fire-control systems. It wasn't just luck that sank the Hood and damaged any smaller ships that go too close; it was good shooting. (Her shooting didn't fall off until that final bombardment.) Winston Churchill called her "a masterpiece of naval construction," although not in this movie. She kept large elements of the fleet pinned down at home simply by sitting in her protected port and being available.

I must have seen this movie a dozen times and each time I begin by wondering if I'll be able to sit through it again. (I've got some of the exchanges memorized.) I generally make it, though. It's too good in its own dated way to pass up.

The model work is not bad at all for its time. The reviewer who said this film called for black and white was correct. It looks cold and frightening on the North Atlantic. Almost everything would have been, or at least seemed, gray even if it had been shot in color. The peformances are up to professional standards. More is a different character here from his usual jocular one -- frosty, demanding, and no nonsense. Until finally, overcome with emotion, he breaks down in an understated scene. Dana Wynter, his assistant, spots him and discreetly leaves him alone. She's too beautiful to criticize as an actress. She radiates purity and anima and gently draws More out of his shell. Naismith is a familiar face, as are many of the others. And there is a running gag in this underground bunker where More is plotting the Bismarck's demise. Nobody knows what time it is or, if they know it's 9 o'clock, they don't know if its morning or evening. Even the Germans aboard the Bismarck are lent some humanity by the script writers. The cadets look like earnest fresh-faced kids. The Captain is a practical man, worried about his ship and his crew. Only Karel Stepanek, as Lutjens, belongs in another, much earlier movie, say one made in 1943. He is well out of the frame established in the rest of the film. Stricken with awe when he gets a birthday greeting from You-Know-Who. Some of the dialogue is made up, out of necessity. Who knows what went on on the Bismarck's bridge, especially during that last catastrophic shelling? Back in the bunker, Dana Wynter looks down at the wooden models on her chart where a dozen British warships surround the single Bismarck and pound her to pieces. "I don't feel like cheering," she says. Well, "War is all hell." Maybe that's why human beings seem to need another one every twenty years or so, to remind ourselves.

What a waste of great ships, and of good men, on both sides. And an argument could even be made that Bismarck's sister ship, the Tirpitz, played an even more important part in the war simply by staying put and tying down so many British ships that were needed elsewhere. Our side "wins," of course. Our side almost always wins when we're the side that's funding the movie. A lot of viewers will expectably feel relief when the threat represented by Bismarck is over, but they probably won't feel much like cheering.

Yes, my children, there was a time when movies knew nothing of CGI, and very difficult scenes of violence and destruction were given over to names like Buddy Gillespie, Wally Veevers, and Warren Newcombe, Howard and Teddy Lydecker. These men looked deep inside their childhoods, and started using miniatures, filmed at slow motion camera speeds to proportionately smooth out the movement of model ships, water, model airplanes, collapsing and exploding buildings, even crash model cars.

The most difficult miniature work was with water and the look of the water in relation to a miniature ship.

It was found that the larger the model ship, the more realistic the water looked, and in Columbia's "Sink the Bismarck", the ships were anywhere from 40-60 feet in length. The water body was an indoor pool over 300 ft. in diameter, surrounded by wind machines and under the floor of the tank, large hydraulic pistons created waves.

Can you imagine what fun that was? Blowing up and sinking these huge models.....it was a dream of mine for years.

Today, a scruffy kid sits in front of a computer and creates sea battles and catastrophes that are astoundingly realistic. He uses 1's and 0's.....nothing of the physical world.

Still, the destruction of the Bismarck, and the capstone piece, the massive explosion of the H.M.S. Hood amaze and awe anyone who watches this film today.

This is a WWII film for the ages, and a centerpiece of a very fun special-effects era.

I agree with the other reviewers who complained that Adm. Gunther Lutjens was portrayed as being a pro-Nazi when in actuality, he wasn't. In fact, Lutjens had protested against the dismissal of Jewish officers from the Navy and when Hitler came to visit the Bismarck 2 weeks before her departure, he gave Hitler the navy salute and not the Nazi salute.

Part of the problem with this movie is where 20th Century Fox obtained their material from. They used the material in C.S. Forrester's book "The Last Nine Days of the Bismarck". In that book Forrester had portrayed Lutjens as being pro-Nazi which had 20th Century Fox researched before making the movie, would have uncovered Forrester's mistake (intentional or not). A better book was Ludovic Kennedy's "Pursuit: The Chase and Sinking of the Battleship Bismarck," but I don't believe his book had come out at the time the movie was made. 20th Century Fox should have waited until it did than to base a true event on a possibly biased book.