Review by cawkwell500

'Rome Open City', premiered in September 1945, was made with non- professionals; it depicted the war with dramatic intensity; it was filmed in the street as well as the studio. But if you change 'in the street' to 'on the open sea' I could as well be referring to 'Western Approaches' premiered almost a year earlier in December 1944. Rossellini of course went on to even greater things, whereas Pat Jackson, the maker of 'Western Approaches', went on to Hollywood and oblivion of a kind. Pity, because his wartime film is outstanding.

For two reasons. It seems to be a drama but is it a documentary about the Atlantic convoys and the perils they faced? or is it a drama made realistic by documentary techniques? That ambivalence makes the film much more compelling, and Jackson can especially take the credit for the melodramatic but still credible idea at the centre of the film which lends it the suspense proper to a fiction film, that of the triangular situation between lifeboat, u-boat and destroyer.

The second reason is the use of non-professionals, schooled in part by Jackson to use eye and voice, but also semi-improvising on the script, following it but also saying things in their own words (including a lot of natural naval swearing which the censors jumped upon unfortunately). They bring no baggage of other roles and lend an authenticity at all levels from captain to other officers to the merchant seamen in the lifeboat. It makes the film mesmerizing. Not to be sure Robert Bresson's 'involuntary expressive' but certainly naturally rather than artificially expressive which should be cinema's truest technique.

www.timcawkwell.co.uk