The Eternal Sea (1955)

Truly Dreadful Film

Brilliant and touching

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

This is a biopic about Admiral John Hoskins. The movie looks more like a war (or navy recruitment) propaganda than a drama. It's amazing Sterling Hayden can go through 1h 43 min with the same facial expression and wooden acting style. He portrayed the guy as a total jerk (maybe it was true...) I agreed more with his critics in the movie than himself. Especially his antics during the construction of new Princeton were terrible. If I were one of the engineers working on the dockyard I'd kill him. As for the directing, the narrative is pretty flat and devoid of tension. The war scenes are unimpressive and cursory. The only quasi-drama happens when he fights against those who want his retirement and is short-lived. The rest is a documentary style slow-paced storytelling. Perhaps, the only redeeming quality of the movie is its sporadic attempts for making a statement for the disabled.

This film could be called almost a purist biopic, but it is different from all other biopics in its carefully documentary character in a very restrained style of refinery making it rather classic in character and form. It simply tells the true story of the naval officer who by sheer stolid stubbornness rose to become one of the greatest and most important admirals of the US navy in the Korea war to finally step down voluntarily when he simply felt it the right thing to do as he saw other needs where he could make himself even more useful. The conclusion of the film is therefore the ultimate apotheos of a very constructive life.But the via crucis to that end is long and difficult, we see the casualties, the downing of carriers, the pioneer planes ending up in flames, the war is there in all its inhumanity and hell, but since it was there it had to be fought and won, and that's what keeps the admiral going even as he lies decrepit and hospitalized with threats of permanent retirement. This is an American parallel to Douglas Bader.It's a unique film in its singular discipline of sticking to the subject and aiming at the point throughout, and therefore it strikes home with a vengeance.

If a person looked to the movie poster to show them what the movie would be about, the one for "The Eternal Sea" would seriously mislead them. After all, you see the Rear Admiral (Sterling Hayden) locked in the arms of his wife (Alexis Smith). However, this movie isn't really a romance and the scene has little to do with this film.Instead of a romance, the film is about a career naval officer-- specifically from WWII until 1955. When the film starts, Captain Hoskins (Hayden) is desk-bound and longing to be back in command of a ship since the war is raging. However, when he finally gets a ship after years of waiting, he's severely injured even before he can take actual command of the ship...losing his lower leg in the process. But Hoskins was determined not to be retired and fought the Navy to remain on active duty. But the war ends and so far the film has given the audience little to understand why they made a movie about the guy. His post-WWII career turned out to be far more eventful as he championed jet aircraft on aircraft carriers and took the US fleet into the Korean War. Overall, this is a mildly interesting lower-budgeted bio-pic. Nothing great, nothing bad about the film...just a decent military film with only a reasonable amount of stock footage (a big plus).

Toward the end of Republic Pictures existence with the demise of the B western and the departure of their number one asset John Wayne, the studio did produce some quality if low budget films. The Eternal Sea is one such film and the studio made good use of naval combat footage from World War II and Korea to integrate them into the story.Which is the true story of Admiral John Hoskins who lost a leg during the battle of Leyte Gulf, but fought to stay on in the Navy on active duty and doing more than desk duty. As the story unfolds Hoskins fought to have our aircraft carriers adapted to jet airplanes, a difficult task indeed because naval aviation itself was only slightly over 25 years old and just getting settled into propeller planes.Sterling Hayden plays the courageous and far seeing admiral Hawkins and Alexis Smith his supportive wife who would dearly like to see her man take an honorable retirement. Alexis Smith always had trouble getting cast because she was a tall girl, a first baseman as Bing Crosby said in Here Comes The Groom. No worries here because Sterling Hayden was 6'5" to Alexis's 5'9".Dean Jagger does a nice job in the role of Hayden's superior and mentor. The Eternal Sea is a real inspirational story and was worthy of a bigger studio and budget than Republic Pictures and the money allocated.