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Yar, you be here: Crash Dive > Customer Reviews Crash Dive Customer Reviews (1 - 3 of 8 Reviews)A recruitment drive with a love interest
Lt. Ward Stewart (Tyrone Power) is in love with PT boasts he can drop depth charges on sneaky German U-boats that use lifeboats as ship bait. His Uncle Adm. Bob Stewart (Minor Watson) needs an exec on a U.S. Sub and talks him into doing his duty. Meanwhile the sub commander Dewey Connors (Dana Andrews) is waiting for one more stripe so he can be worthy of popping the question of marriage to his girl, Jean Hewlett (Anne Baxter, `Nefretiri' in "The Ten Commandments" (1956).) You guessed it while Dewey is away Bob discovers Jean and beats him to the question. Jean says sure; she just forgot to tell ether of the men about the other. One of the interesting things about this movie is that instead of good guy - bad guy, both officers are good guys and it takes both personalities to accomplish the missions. They do go out of their way to make the Germans sneaky and do extraordinary feats with their sub and commandos. Love Triangle and Anti-Nazi Sea Action
Oliver Cromwell Jones, the black cook, is given a lot of screen time and the screen play treats him as an integral part of the mission. He is played by Ben Carter, one of the actors profiled in Donald Bogle's recent book BRIGHT BOULEVARDS, BOLD DREAMS; he was the agent for black Los Angeles actors who got in trouble with his clients because he often took the best parts and played them himself! This is definitely one of those cases, for he has a scene with James Gleason for which he should have been nominated for an Oscar, he's so good in the part--and it isn't one of Hollywood's wretched racially stereotypical parts, but one with real human feeling, dignity, comedy all mixed together. Gleason is super too. However the picture really belongs to its headlining trio of stars, and they all rise to the occasion. Anne Baxter is not photographed very well. One of the characters picks up her photograph and looks at it saying, "She's so beautiful," but in truth she looks awful and her face is round as a beach ball. But she's perky, soulful, repressed in turns. I love the part where she teaching a squadron of schoolgirls how to shoot an arrow into a line of targets. The girls are dressed in incredibly tight school uniforms (archery outfits I guess) and all move like robots or the dancers in a Robert Palmer video, all releasing their arrows at exactly the same time. The odd thing is that they're supposed to be nervous and giggly about the sudden appearance of Tyrone Power, so all of them miss the target. Baxter is just terrible playing the part--did she ever get good, no not really, but they wrote better parts for her later on. However except for her face she looks wonderful and the designers have some great 40s clothes for her, including several pairs of red gloves which they must have thought would be a big trendsetter in 1943. Dana Andrews is very trim and not as creepy as usual. Acting (and good looks) honors belong to Tyrone Power, who has one of those scenes where his dotty grandma (Dame May Whitty) opens up a childhood scrapbook and points out to his girl (Baxter) a photo of her grandson as a baby boy, naked, bare ass hanging in the air. He's all embarrassed and slams the book down on Grandma's hands. They have a funny relationship. She calls him "Stinky," and he greets her fondly as "Butch." Dame May Whitty could play a hard, cold aristocrat; but here she's the loveable kind, sort of like Marie Dressler used to play. The Technicolor transfer on the DVD is superb. I wonder when people went to the movies in the 1940s if they zeroed in on Technicolor pictures and felt disappointed when a movie was in black and white. The blues, reds, and purples of CRASH DIVE are so rich and lustrous you feel as though it had been melted down from velvet. Rousing Wartime Submarine Story With Romantic Subplot
Being Tyrone Power's final film effort before taking up active duty, "Crash Dive", is most often just dismissed as a footnote to his highly successful pre war career as one of Hollywood's most popular and goodlooking leading men. It however is a highly enjoyable film in its own right which at times seems uncertain in which genre it is actually placing itself as it combines an exciting wartime submarine story with a light romantic story with many comedy elements. While the often abrupt change from suspensful drama to light romance is not always successful this film should not be dismissed and cetainly for the year of its release (1943), was a very topical film illustrating the very dangerous work being carried out by the armed forces in the Atlantic. This story had an amazingly high budget for that year and boasted superb location photography and vivid technicolour all wrapped up in a story guaranteed to please all sections of the viewing public. Tyrone Power's rousing final speech illustrating the great work being undertaken by all sections of the armed forces is often criticised today as blatant propaganda but we have to always remember the period in time in which it was produced when people were anxious to know more about the armed forces and what they were doing in the war effort.
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