Missions secrètes

Intended as a tribute to the Merchant Navy, and by far the most ambitious and time consuming production of the Crown Film Unit, 'Western Approaches' did much to gain Technicolor acceptance in the eyes of serious critics.

Photographed under arduous and hazardous conditions in choppy seas by director Pat Jackson and top Technicolor cinematographer Jack Cardiff in the days when Technicolor cameras were huge and cumbersome, it benefits from a strong narrative drive, while the occasional rough edges and amateurish acting merely underline that it was genuinely shot on a small boat at sea with bona fide merchant seamen.

If you love war movies and the classic then this film is for you. Real heroes, hats off to all military.

It's a feature story from the Crown Film Unit. A merchant ship has been sunk, and its 22 survivors under P.J. Pyecraft wait for the Royal Navy to send out a ship to rescue them. It's done, but there's a U-Boat whose captain knows the situation, and is waiting with the boat's last two torpedoes to pick off the unsuspecting warship.

It's one of those stiff-upper-lip movies, with all the facilities that the British authorities can give it. What makes it stand out from the crowd is Jack Cardiff's Technicolor camerawork: not just the portrait shots that offer noble visages under pressure, but the blues: the azure blue of the sky, the green-blue of the sea, and the steel blue of the ships' interiors.... and occasional snatches of that dark, velvety midnight blue that seems unique to British Technicolor, with the pink-faced, unblinking faces of the men looking at radios and dials and such. Cardiff's abilities with Technicolor have never been matched, and here his camera paints the scenes like Rembrandt, if Rembrandt ever worked in blue; I don't recall he ever did.

Very worthwhile reading Pat Jackson's memoir of his beginnings in film, in "Retake Please - Night Mail to Western Approaches" Conversational style easy to follow, and fascinating to learn how he and his crew achieved what they did, sometime through great hardship. He gives a lot of detail as to how effects were achieved, or not as the case may be. Reading his accounts brings home how ground breaking he was in creating his "documentary" style. Much criticism has been levelled at other war documentarians (EG Frank Hurley, II World war, Antarctic, photographer) for falsifying photos in order to achieve the romance of or horror of what they wanted to convey. It is clear in this memoir that Pat Jackson saw himself as having a "rallying the troops" job to do and he had no qualms using the illusions capable in the film technology of the time to get his message across. The most satisfying aspect of this memoir is his warmth and fondness for the people he met along the way, he often quotes from their first meetings in great detail, particularly the non professional casts he employed in Western Approaches. A wonderful read.

This was yet another classic British wartime 'documentary', one I was wary of in view of its feature-length (80 minutes) – especially, at this juncture, having been somewhat let down by a few of its contemporaneous ilk – but which would prove a surprisingly positive experience. Like the recently-viewed THE SILENT VILLAGE (1943), the documentary epithet (not to mention its title!) is misleading here, since it is actually a narrative film – albeit a re-enactment of a true WWII episode – that just happens to feature non-professional actors.

Indeed, it can be said that such wartime efforts were "neo-realist" before the term was even coined or the style had actually taken off in Italy! Still, it is debatable whether the end result would have been this noteworthy had professional performers been employed rather than real naval servicemen – since it tells a standard (albeit undeniably gripping) tale of a rescue at sea and the ensuing scuttling of a U-Boat!

Apart from Clifton Parker's evocative score, two novelty aspects are employed here that make the whole show all the more appealing to the casual viewer: the fact that it was shot in Technicolor (by the great Jack Cardiff, no less); the documentary pedigree itself allowed for (or, I should say, excused) the copious use of language that would otherwise not have been permissible for the era – such as "bastards", "bloody", "damn" and "hell"...not to mention sketches of naked women adorning the walls of the radio operators' quarters! For what it is worth, director Jackson would eventually break into commercial film-making but never again approached the reasonable level of excellence achieved in this case!