Cheap Cruel Sea (Video) (Jack Hawkins, Donald Sinden) (Charles Frend) Price

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Customer Reviews of Cruel Sea

Cruel Sea 1950 and present
I saw the movie "The Cruel Sea" on the big screen in the 1950s.It is one of the best movies I have ever seen. The VHS version omits scenes that have to do with deveopment of the character and personalities of the ships personnel.With out these scene much of the depair and lonelyness of the personl is lost.
Let us hope that the film is reissured on DVD and the deleted are added.

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The Battle of the Atlantic-The British View
This magnificent film does for the British as what the awesome "Das Boot" does for the Germans. Yet in many ways, this movie is as much a "polar opposite" to the great German film. "The Cruel Sea" is about two ships, her captain, the wardroom of Officers, selected enlisted men and spans the length of the war (39-45), "Das Boot" is about a single U-boat, her crew and one patrol in 1941. Yet each complements the other. Jack Hawkins is simply superb as Ericson, the reluctant warrior and the rest of the cast is top notch. Fans of the "Indiana Jones" movies will recognize a young Denholm Elliot as a young ensign. For me, one of the most gripping scenes is when the "Compass Rose" detects a U-boat lurking beneath some survivors floating. Ericson agonizingly orders the attack. As the depth charges explode beneath (killing the survivors, but manages to drive the enemy submarine off), one of his crew yells, "Bloody murderer!" and we can see the toll this takes on Ericson. Later that night Lt. Lockhart, the ships executive officer, tries to console the anguished and drunken Ericson who simply says, "it was the war that killed them...The bloody war," this is simply fantastic drama and I think, one of Hawkins' greatest scenes. The film's writer, Eric Ambler (himself a great novelist) captures Nicholas Monserrat's great novel perfectly and while certain scenes from the novel had to be excised, he maintains the story's drive and superb characterizations.

See this film.

When will it come out on DVD?

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A realistic tale of the war at sea
This war time drama reflects the desperate struggle of one man, his crew and their ship. HMS Compass Rose, a corvette carrying out her duty in protecting the vulnerable convoys from hunting packs of U-boats in the North Atlantic.

All the experiences of war at sea are portrayed here, as if etched on the faces of the men. We see the effects on HMS Compass's crew having to live with the arduous conditions at sea and the horrors of war, rescuing poor wretched survivors from the sea, choking and covered in oil while all the time in fear of the unseen threat of a U-boat attack.

However, the most memorable scene, and one of which must surely be equal to any other in the history of this type of war film genre, has to be when Captain Ericson (Jack Hawkins) is forced to decide whether or not to attack a U-boat or save a group of survivors in the water directly above his intended target.

Historically after 1942 this dilemma was turned into a blunt order when the Admiralty instructed anti-submarine vessels to make every attempt to destroy a U-boat regardless of survivors in the water and thus carrying out its priority to protect the ships in the convoy. In the book by Herbert Gordon Male 'In All Respects Ready For Sea,' there is a true story of such an attack and the author gives his own account of how he and other survivors came under depth charge attack from a Royal Naval corvette.

My late father served on a anti-submarrine armed trawler during the war and his experiences were of special interest to the films main star, Jack Hawkins whom my father met and became friends.. My father always felt that this film was an important one in that it told a more factual story. More importantly, such personal experiences of the war at sea were often eclipsed by more heroic tales of the Battle of the Atlantic.

Today it is as honest a film as it was then. It shows the effects of war on the ordinary sailor who fought in the longest conflict during the Second World War, The Battle of The Atlantic.

'Cruel Sea' is one of those few films that really show the personal side of war instead of concentrating on the expected pyrotechnics and thrilling action normally associated with the big screen.