Hell and High Water (1954)

Too much of everything

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

I actually saw this at the cinema as a young kid and it left quite an impression on me. Subsequent viewings on television have perhaps inevitably modified my enthusiasm.Widmark was such an iconic actor that it's hard not to keep watching any movie in which he features. And it's his amazing charisma, with the ambiguous mix of amoral detachment and yet ruthless determination of his character that raises this movie above the mediocre.He and a fairly passe B-movie cast are tasked with the job of spying on the (Chinese) reds. A group of dubiously patriotic wealthy businessmen have pooled their resources to buy a WW2 sub for the purpose. Off they go. It does at least look like a submarine they're in, whereas most of the set pieces appear stagy to the point of tackiness. This was not a big-budget effort. They have adventures along the way. On arrival they discover that these beastly commies are going to drop an atom-bomb from a captured American plane. That way the Yanks will get the blame.One of their number - the moral scientist - has sneaked ashore and plans to warn them of the plane's departure. They surface in time to ambush it and shoot it down, though things don't go quite according to plan.Lately I have begun to think that cinema - the big screen - is the only place to watch a movie and see what the director intended. Even a really big screen telly can never do justice to the original. It's a bit like watching wild animals in zoos instead of their natural environment. Unfortunately, you can't see these old efforts at the cinema any more, and in any case I am constantly stalked by a bloke with a big head who keeps sitting in front of me, whilst another character with a seemingly un-openable cellophane bag sits behind.Without Widmark this would be a serious bummer, answering the worst expectations of the term 'made for TV'. But he is there, and that makes all the difference. Though it's by no means particularly memorable.

When James Bond reached the big screen in the early Sixties Ian Fleming's baddies - the Russians - were diplomatically changed into Third Force characters playing off the super-powers against each other usually to rack up loot or feed a madman's ego. In the bristling up-and-atom Fifties it was a different tale. With McCarthyism breathing down its neck Hollywood had a vested interest in slagging off the Reds without fear or favour giving rise to - among others - two fascinating collaborations between Sam Fuller and Richard Widmark. Fuller claimed though to eschew ideology in favour of tough tabloid human-interest while Widmark, a noted liberal but not a 'joiner', ducked and dived in the flow of things to keep his career afloat. PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET was a dark urban thriller in which a pickpocket inadvertently pinches top-secret microfilm. He's not a patriot and his subsequent actions are mercenary but the murder of a friend finally triggers personal revenge. Interestingly the Commie spy's also a mercenary, being easier to combat dramatically, I suppose, than a set of alien ideas.When HIGH WATER took to the waves CinemaScope was in, spreading its wings on a mushroom-cloud explosion near the Arctic circle, an earnest voice-over suggesting It's All True. A busy reel of 'Scope travelogue zaps us around the world (there's a momentary clip from THREE COINS IN THE FOUNTAIN with Maggie McNamara at the edge of frame) as the media buzzes with the sudden disappearance of Professor Montel, top man in his nuclear field - has he 'gone over' ? "Like something out of Inner Sanctum" ex-Cmdr Adam Jones observes on being summoned to a secret meeting in the dead of night (a nice in-joke: Widmark acted in countless radio shows before movie-fame). Get that name, a potent mix of the First Man and the First American Sea-Dog but like the pickpocket this Jones is no flag-waver. He's hired for cash by a civilian consortium of scientists headed by Montel (he didn't defect) to investigate suspicious activity around said Arctic - the film's crafty way of turning the Cold War hot, potentially, without appearing to do so. No governments are officially represented on this "peaceful expedition" and the only Americans involved are the mercenary Jones and his "key men" from World War II. Even the submarine they're using is an old Japanese "sewer-pipe". Jones does insist, against objections, on arming the vessel - not as a political gesture, you understand, but just to cover everyone's butt. So off we go into a delirious farrago of unabashed clichés - the one girl on the sub, the skipper's guilty past (he lost a ship through disobeying orders), the Chinese equivalent of "the good German" etc. knowingly marshalled by Fuller to lively effect mainly within the boat (just as well as the surface-scenes against lurid backcloths are on a par with the worst moments in BEN-HUR).Montel's on board as expedition-leader along with his fetching assistant Denise who's rejected at first as a 'jonah' by the superstitious matelots but soon wins them round with a gracious plea for tolerance - the brimming eyes probably did the trick. "That's no female - that's a scientist !" Denise can speak umpteen languages but doesn't know what a 'pass' is. She soon finds out, the sailor-boys lining up to make her acquaintance, the jovial Ski with his fake tattoos and a drunken crewman who gets physical till the skipper knocks him cold. "A last-minute replacement," he tells her. Not one of his key men, obviously. Despite occasional frictions with both eggheads Jones does a nifty job of seducing Denise in a quite sexy bunkside dalliance bathed in infra-red during a cat-and-mouse, no-sounds encounter with a Red sub. Chin Lee the cook (who appears out of nowhere via Central Casting) has no English but entertains the crew with comic parodies of popular songs in fluent pidgin-American. When a Red Chinese officer is captured during a contretemps on their island-objective Chin is enlisted to pose as another prisoner to find out what they're up to. He insists on being beaten up by the skipper in person beforehand to make it more convincing - "It won't hurt if you do it" - something rather dark going on here. He secures the vital information but is killed by the Red. They intend dropping a bomb on Korea and Manchuria from a plane with American markings - as they would, of course. (The ultimate paranoid nightmare). Jones' patriotism surfaces - "They're gonna lay the biggest egg in history and we're taking the rap for it. I don't like that !" Quite so. He thereupon orders up every gun the old bucket can muster to knock the Gooks out of the sky. Montel, the man of reason, protests "this insanity" but knows the movie's got him beat and sacrifices himself for the greater commonsense. "Each man has his own reason for living and his own price for dying." (The script got rather fond of this line and tended to repeat it). Mission completed, the world is saved (for the moment) but not without an extra twist of pathos I won't reveal even at this great distance because it's rather good.By the Sixties the climate had changed sufficiently to allow the nuclear-disaster cycle where someone presses the button - always by accident or delusion and always from our side - and the world comes apart. Widmark returned to Arctic waters as producer and star of THE BEDFORD INCIDENT in which a hawkish destroyer-captain, like a modern Ahab, obsessively stalks and hustles a trapped Russian sub to the point of no return. No girls here, no jokes, no colour and 'Scope. And this time round absolutely no-one gets to "head for home."

When yet another atomic scientist goes missing behind the Iron Curtain, a private submarine expedition is put together to trail a freighter suspected of being able to lead the crew to what is believed to be the place where the Chinese are conducting nuclear research in preparation for a war. Former submarine commander Jones is contracted to lead the exhibition with a ragtag crew and a submarine in need of maintenance time that is not available to him. With Professor Montel technically in charge with his (female) assistant Professor Gerard by his side, the boat sets out on the mission of observation but with the ever present threat of danger in the hostile waters.A bit of a romp this one as it revels more in the gaudy sweep of the telling rather than the tension from narrative detail. The plot doesn't really matter so much as it is a simple device for the voyage. Along the way we get personal conflicts, crew tensions and underwater stand-offs as well as some fire-fights. At no point was I hooked but it is rather entertaining in the way that school-boy adventure stories are – full of tough men, sacrifice and action. In this regard it suits the people making it and Fuller directs with simple but bright colours – easy to understand and engage with even if they are too simple to be real. So it is with the characters and plot but it still works. The romantic side of the story is a flop and I didn't see why a female character couldn't just be a character and had to be a love interest (well, obviously I understand why this decision is made, but I didn't see the value of it in the story).The headlining of Richard Widmark is rarely a bad thing and he fits this tough action drama with his stern delivery and commanding presence. There is no doubting that Darvi is sexy and a good presence when it comes to being coy and flirtatious however when more is asked of her she is found wanting as she lacks the range. The rest of the cast fit in well around them – nobody brilliant of course but everyone able to be at the level required by the material.Not that intelligent or complex a film but a solid enough wartime action film which will do the job if that's all you're looking for.

I thought the movie was good for it's era. Much better than some of the other fiction movies of it's time. The submarine scenes were very good. Especially the detail of water trickling down the periscope cylinder when they were submerged.I too wondered where they were disposing of the buckets of water when they were supposed to be running silent. Again the scene was out of sequence.Also the scene where Richard yells periscope up to look for the enemy sub, and they are surfacing. I thought it looked funny seeing the sub on top of the water and Richard is looking out the periscope.Again good movie for it's time.