Convoy

The title to this review is according to legend the remarks of Noel Coward when coming out of a screening.To those of you too young to know Gamages was a big department store on the corner of High Holborn and Grays Inn Road,which in its toy department sold lots of model planes and boats.If you look at the battle scenes it is quite apparent that the crew of this film have never been further than the water tank that used to be situated under the floor of the main stage at Ealing.There are lots of familiar faces such as the up and coming Michael Wilding and Stewart Granger.This is essentially stiff upper lip flag waving material.Which is enjoyable if rather dated,so just suspend your disbelief when watching this.

Even though this film was a flag waving gift to the British war effort, this did not take away from the interesting plot that was contained within the story. Two officers of the same war ship has been married to the same woman and she just so happens to be on a transport vessel that the Germans plan to sink. This is the rub of the story as now conflict between the two officers must be settled before engaging the Germans in a sea battle. And as you can guess from a 1940 British war movie, the allies are going to give their best as the brutes from central Europe try to advance on the people of Great Britain. For a fast paced early war movie, this was played well by the actors. But for some reason, the filming studio decided, perhaps to save money, used a large amount of miniatures during most of the film which took away from the viewing pleasure. It was probably necessary to use miniatures for some of the fight scenes but this film went well overboard by filming all actors in a studio environment using a water tub for close-up scenes of ships. It was so obvious and useless that they even used studio tanks for lazy shots of a ship that was calm in the water. Overall the film, even with its cheap looks, did entertain enough to make the story interesting to the end. A bit of help from the studio would have made this project much better.

The Brits took a beating but never quit.

It is a film of hope.

Good job.

I've been watching several British WWII movies and among the bunch this is the worst. It involves fictional ships and U-boats and you can clearly see that the battle scenes were shot probably in somebody's bathroom.

It was made in 1940 and it was a difficult moment for Britain, it definitely looks and feel like a propaganda movie. The main plot concerns Armitage, the captain of a British destroyer, his estranged wife Lucy and her alleged lover who happens to be assigned to Armitage's ship.

This love triangle is treated in a very sophisticated and civilised way, helped by the fact that Lucy is played by a sophisticated beauty.

In the midst of this, the Germans manage to attack the titular convoy and cause some havoc but the British keep a stiff upper lip despite the losses.