Pursuit of the Graf Spee

source: Pursuit of the Graf Spee

Of all the British WWII films this is the only one where the acting consistently makes me uneasy. Unlike Dambusters, Reach for the Sky, or even Malta Story the British somehow are overblown and very Saturday matinée. Peter Finch is excellent; Jack Hawkins, not so, and compared to his brilliant performance in the Cruel Sea is very flat. That aside, the naval manoeuvers are fine. The plotting and planning phases are well covered, and the build-up to the importance and significance so early in WWII is explored. This is definitely viewable but considering it's Powell and Pressburger, probably the greatest team ever in British cinema, and certainly the most influential, this is not their finest hour. Definitely a must-see for those who like the genre; just brace yourself for some non-stiff upper lip acting, and some cheesy café scenes in Montevideo and a good time will be had by all.

If I could give it no stars, I would. A waste of two hours of viewing. The ships didn't look much like actual participants. Even Achilles didn't remind me of Achilles! Wrong number of guns and turrets on all other participants. And the Graf Spee wasn't anything like the Graf Spee. Had two turrets, here three and clearly not German. What was wrong with models? Film drags. Battle ridiculous. Only saw the British side the entire scene except for the captured British seamen on board Graf Spee--and that's still just the British side of the story. After the sorry battle there's still forty minutes of virtually nothing. You won't learn anything of the poor German captain's fate from this movie either.

The film might have worked had it been conceived as a kind of chess match -- between the British Commodore and Capt. Langsdorff, and incorporating the diplomatic shuffling. But the German point of view was dropped as soon as the first shell was fired. We got scenes aboard Graf Spee only in the prisoners' hold. We needed a parallel scene from Langsdorff's perspective to the one Quayle held with his commanders. The final decision -- to scuttle -- came out of the blue. Hitler's role was not mentioned. Langsdorff's concern for his crew was only implied in the funeral scene. Check me if I'm wrong, but the actual funerals occurred on land, did they not? Langsdorff's suicide was not included -- shocking to someone who knows the history. His motive was complicated, but included, apparently, his wish to silence anyone who would claim that he was a coward for not re-engaging the British flotilla. The film did dramatize the really rudimentary communications available in 1939 -- bugles, shouted commands, signal flags, binoculars. Had Langsdorff had an observation aircraft, as the British are shown to have had, things might have been very different.

Updated on 6/07/2018 Just tried to watch this lousy film again and wished to upgrade the rating a little bit higher, but guess what, NO CAN DO! This is indeed one of the worst WWII films. The screenplay was so bad, the British naval force, three battle ships against one Nazi battleship No. 139, was a complete joke! The sea battle was so confusing, the salvos of the ship cannons were just messy, the British naval officers on the bridges of the the three ship all looked like amateurs, lots of small talks among them. Then the Nazi battleship escaped into Uruquay coastline, a neutral country during the WWII., the movie suddenly became a carnival before X'mas. Those sailors, officers and captains of the commercial ships sunk and captured by the Nazi ship all seemed to be on a cruise ship, they didn't look a bit worried about their fates. The Nazi German captain was a classic gentleman...Terrible script. This is perhaps one of the worst naval battle films or the champion worst British navy force against the Germany navy battle ship movie ever to show on the big screen. Lot of blah, blah and blah from each side, endless small talks among the Germans, the captives on the German ship, more bullshit-like small talks on the British vessels. Both of the German and British officers on their battle ships didn't look like they were in a cat-and-mouse war game, they all looked so relaxed like on vacation. Once the enemies were in sight, one of British battle ship captain was still in pajama, none of the officers and sailors looked like they were going to engage in a sea battle, nobody dressed for battle still wearing what they used to be. Every scene just looked so staged like a show that was so stupidly shot and directed following a stupid script with terrible dialog. I just couldn't believe those viewers who gave such a highly satisfying reviews of this lame and ridiculous film, and wondered if we were viewing the same movie. This is a movie that you and I should never so senselessly and unpredictably decided to watch. This movie would just make you feel how stupid you are like those who played roles in this movie. It only left a bad taste in your memory.

I always laugh out loud at the comments that portray this film as good. It is awful and always has been. True, there are some good performances from Quayle and Finch but the loose plot, bath tub ships and mostly one sided British view makes it one to forget. The dire bath tub battle sequences have come straight from the comics. Best to read a good book on the subject and stay away from such overpowering rot! Only when the film moves to land sequences does it have any credibility and there are still plenty of cardboard backdrops to help the film become even more foolish. The dialog reeks of upper class English nonsense also. Utterly sicking all round.

This film mixes action with respectful exploration of the main characters, on both sides of the conflict. Excellent acting all round. The plot is developed carefully and sets the stage well for the ending. The local South American scenes offer colourful counterpoints to the preceding at sea sequences. This film in British genre with the makers' principal focii being the storyline and the acting. Fans of the U.S.-style war movies may find the film too understated at times. They will also find the use of models for some of the battle scenes less than convincing when compared to the larger-than-life realism of computer-generated imagery.

After reading the many enthusiastic comments about this rather obscure Michael Powell film, and as an enthusiast of WWII films, I was eager to see this rarely screened film. What a disappointment! Yes, there is some real acting talent at work here. Yes, there are some relatively brief excellent sea shots...some appear to be stock. Yes, it looks like Powell made a sincere attempt at historical accuracy. But ach, what a dull two hours. Most of the scenes are very stagy; groups of British naval officers mouthing stiff, silly dialog while standing mostly motionless in the frame. Bloodless sea battles; the dead and injured barely even get their tropical whites dirty, let alone soiled with blood! (There's one scene showing a direct hit on a ships bridge and most of the officers didn't even lose their caps!). The story lines also just never become engaging. The captured crew on the German ship have an entirely different, and rather distracting, story from the film's central point. If you approach this film as if you're watching a play embellished with film you'll not be as disappointed as I was. Silly me; I was expecting something like "Sink the Bismark" but this film completely failed to engage me and I suspect I'm not an atypical viewer. Usually there's a reason why a film has become forgotten and obscure. In the case of this one it was a gesture of humanity.

I think of Pursuit of the Graf Spee as being a bit like Hitchcock's The Wrong Man-- an attempt by a master stylist (or two, in this case) to play it utterly straight and go for documentary realism results in a film that's simply deprived of any of their virtues, and only as interesting as the dry facts themselves. It's too bad, because for all their reputations as outre stylists (funny to think that this is almost contemporaneous with the utterly over the top Oh!! Rosalinda!!, also starring Quayle) P&P had made a number of the best British war films (Contraband, 49th Parallel, The Small Back Room, etc.) by showing how war affected interesting and quirky characters. Here, though, the characters are stiff-upper-lip stock figures, hard to even see clearly on TV (the movie was made in VistaVision, and relies on wide shots and few closeups), and the one really interesting figure, the "good German" who commanded the Graf Spee and, to judge by his actions in real life, disdained the Nazis, would seem to be an ideal protagonist for the contrarians P&P but is kept at arm's length, presumably because even P&P didn't dare use the real British ships and then give all their sympathy to the German who shot at them. If you're the sort of buff, like some here, who can recognize instantly that an American ship is playing the Graf Spee, then the realism of staging this story with the actual ships involved (mostly) is going to interest you. But otherwise, there is little here to suggest that two of the best British filmmakers as opposed to any average craftsman like Michael Anderson or J. Lee Thompson, was involved in staging this spectacle.

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger are probably best known for their mystical, romantic films like: 'A Matter of Life and Death'; 'Black Narcissus', and 'The Red Shoes'. 'Battle of the River Plate' is a decent film, but it does have some awkward lapses. There is some excellent footage shot at sea using veteran Royal Navy ships. Unfortunately this sits uneasily with the studio sets. During the battle scenes I had the uneasy feeling someone out of shot was throwing buckets of water in the air to simulate shell-fire. Instead of indulging in Technicolor, I feel the producers should have gone for the harsher monochrome which 'The Cruel Sea' and 'Sink the Bismarck!' use so well. Black and white photography also makes the shift between location and studio work much less obvious. There are some good performances in the film, notably Peter Finch as Langsdorff. I remember seeing newsreel footage of the real Langsdorff attending the funeral of his men in Montevideo, he gave a German Naval salute instead of the Nazi version. His portrayal as a 'decent' German has a basis in fact. The battle of the River Plate was the last Naval action to take place without the benefit of technical advances such as radar. It was a fine piece of seamanship and the story deserved to be told. At the end of this film, unfortunately, you can't help feeling it could have been told better.