CONTAINS SPOILERS
No long vistas of sloping decks under starlit skies or of a sinking ship with rows of frightened people lining the rails. The film opens with a close up of a derelict WWII mine sloshing about in the sea while the sound of a large liner's engines gets louder and louder. A very brief swirl of explosion, fire and smoke set to a score of people screaming as a voice intones "Abandon Ship!" This is followed by a short sequence of some effective images - particularly a baby doll floating face up - with a narrator telling us the rest of the background we need to know for this unusual, unsettling drama about survival to begin.
The story is simply this: a lifeboat is too overcrowded to survive a coming storm and the senior officer must decide unilaterally who to jettison overboard so the rest can have a chance to live. A simple problem with a simple solution - sort of.
Based on events following the loss of the William Brown which departed Liverpool, England on March 13, 1841 for Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with 65 passengers and 17 crew, and sank about 250 miles off Newfoundland after colliding with an iceberg on the night of April 19. (The Titanic sank about 300 miles off Newfoundland after colliding with an iceberg on the night of April 15 - 71 years later.)
The film upgrades the ship to a large luxury liner in the mid-20th century and places it in the Pacific or South Atlantic Ocean as opposed to an emigrant vessel in the North Atlantic in the mid-19th century. It also takes many dramatic liberties with details and invents some over-dramatized subplots yet retains the larger events and moral dilemma essentially intact. The time line of the real events is naturally compressed in the film for clarity, but very well paced.
In the actual sinking, two crew members made the decisions about who to sacrifice: the First Mate, Francis Rhodes and a crewman named Alexander William Holmes. Again for clarity, the film sensibly distills these into one character called Alexander Holmes (Tyrone Power) and makes him the senior officer. It also creates a plausible, (but not perfect), scenario for how one person in a crowded lifeboat could alone compel others to throw some overboard. Not that easy a plot device to construct without arming him with a machine gun - the script only allows its 'Alexander Holmes' a pistol which is initially unloaded and a flare gun.
The real Holmes, Rhodes and other survivors eventually reached Philadelphia; Rhodes fled and was never found. Holmes was tried between April 13-23, 1842 in Philadelphia for manslaughter, found guilty and sentenced to a fine of $20.00 and six months in prison. The defense offered an argument of self-preservation, which had some merit hence the relatively light sentence and the jury's recommendation for leniency.
The film ends with the survivors being rescued by a passing ship. At the finale the narrator returns, (nicely book-ending the story), explains that the real Holmes was tried, found guilty, sentenced to only six months due to the unusual circumstances and then asks the viewer to decide for themselves. This isn't Bergman or Campion or Kubrick but even so some serious thought went into this production.
Another IMDb reviewer is very hard on this film, finding the plot absurd and unrealistic. Indeed it does appear fantastic, yet the historical accuracy is unusual for a movie in general and exceptional for 1957 US/UK co-production from Columbia Pictures. Before the invention of radio, ('wireless telegraphy'), in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, survivors of a disabled or sunken ship were pretty much on their own and had no way to call for help - the times when ships could literally "disappear without a trace." (Of course, at the time the movie takes place radio was well established - the script eliminates this inconsistency quite nicely.) The type of case the film is based on wasn't exactly unique: an excellent examination of the issues surrounding survival after shipwreck is "Cannibalism and the Common Law," A.W. Brian Simpson, University of Chicago Press, 1984. The book focuses on Regina v. Dudley & Stephens, the 1884 trial of two seamen for killing and eating the cabin-boy following the loss of the yacht Mignonette.
Technically the film is very well done. The black and white photography is excellent and must have been difficult with so much water everywhere. The script has enough grit and rough edges to give it some real substance. Very good, solid performances by Tyrone Power, Mai Zetterling, Moira Lister, Lloyd Nolan and the rest of the cast. (Perhaps 'heroic' performances is more accurate given how often everyone on screen is soaked either from being immersed shoulders deep or from having spray blown onto them.) Often compared to Hitchcock's Lifeboat, which, I think, is a bit of apples & oranges as the claustrophobic locations are similar but the core plots distinct. Lifeboat is the earlier film and, not surprisingly, even though he had to make it up as he went along Hitchcock captured the claustrophobic feeling somewhat better. But director Richard Sale does a very good job as well and I would guess he probably had Lifeboat memorized before production started on Abandon Ship.
David Langton, Gordon Jackson and Laurence Naismith have small parts: Langton and Jackson would work together again as the characters Richard Belamy and Angus Hudson, respectively, in the outstanding BBC series Upstairs, Downstairs of the early 1970s. Naismith plays the briefly surviving captain and the following year would play the Titanic's captain EJ Smith in A Night to Remember - not a lucky actor when given the command of a celluloid ship.
Not flawless and perhaps a bit dated, but still a rather powerful, disturbing film. If this sort of story appeals, I recommend it very highly.
XYZ
No long vistas of sloping decks under starlit skies or of a sinking ship with rows of frightened people lining the rails. The film opens with a close up of a derelict WWII mine sloshing about in the sea while the sound of a large liner's engines gets louder and louder. A very brief swirl of explosion, fire and smoke set to a score of people screaming as a voice intones "Abandon Ship!" This is followed by a short sequence of some effective images - particularly a baby doll floating face up - with a narrator telling us the rest of the background we need to know for this unusual, unsettling drama about survival to begin.
The story is simply this: a lifeboat is too overcrowded to survive a coming storm and the senior officer must decide unilaterally who to jettison overboard so the rest can have a chance to live. A simple problem with a simple solution - sort of.
Based on events following the loss of the William Brown which departed Liverpool, England on March 13, 1841 for Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with 65 passengers and 17 crew, and sank about 250 miles off Newfoundland after colliding with an iceberg on the night of April 19. (The Titanic sank about 300 miles off Newfoundland after colliding with an iceberg on the night of April 15 - 71 years later.)
The film upgrades the ship to a large luxury liner in the mid-20th century and places it in the Pacific or South Atlantic Ocean as opposed to an emigrant vessel in the North Atlantic in the mid-19th century. It also takes many dramatic liberties with details and invents some over-dramatized subplots yet retains the larger events and moral dilemma essentially intact. The time line of the real events is naturally compressed in the film for clarity, but very well paced.
In the actual sinking, two crew members made the decisions about who to sacrifice: the First Mate, Francis Rhodes and a crewman named Alexander William Holmes. Again for clarity, the film sensibly distills these into one character called Alexander Holmes (Tyrone Power) and makes him the senior officer. It also creates a plausible, (but not perfect), scenario for how one person in a crowded lifeboat could alone compel others to throw some overboard. Not that easy a plot device to construct without arming him with a machine gun - the script only allows its 'Alexander Holmes' a pistol which is initially unloaded and a flare gun.
The real Holmes, Rhodes and other survivors eventually reached Philadelphia; Rhodes fled and was never found. Holmes was tried between April 13-23, 1842 in Philadelphia for manslaughter, found guilty and sentenced to a fine of $20.00 and six months in prison. The defense offered an argument of self-preservation, which had some merit hence the relatively light sentence and the jury's recommendation for leniency.
The film ends with the survivors being rescued by a passing ship. At the finale the narrator returns, (nicely book-ending the story), explains that the real Holmes was tried, found guilty, sentenced to only six months due to the unusual circumstances and then asks the viewer to decide for themselves. This isn't Bergman or Campion or Kubrick but even so some serious thought went into this production.
Another IMDb reviewer is very hard on this film, finding the plot absurd and unrealistic. Indeed it does appear fantastic, yet the historical accuracy is unusual for a movie in general and exceptional for 1957 US/UK co-production from Columbia Pictures. Before the invention of radio, ('wireless telegraphy'), in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, survivors of a disabled or sunken ship were pretty much on their own and had no way to call for help - the times when ships could literally "disappear without a trace." (Of course, at the time the movie takes place radio was well established - the script eliminates this inconsistency quite nicely.) The type of case the film is based on wasn't exactly unique: an excellent examination of the issues surrounding survival after shipwreck is "Cannibalism and the Common Law," A.W. Brian Simpson, University of Chicago Press, 1984. The book focuses on Regina v. Dudley & Stephens, the 1884 trial of two seamen for killing and eating the cabin-boy following the loss of the yacht Mignonette.
Technically the film is very well done. The black and white photography is excellent and must have been difficult with so much water everywhere. The script has enough grit and rough edges to give it some real substance. Very good, solid performances by Tyrone Power, Mai Zetterling, Moira Lister, Lloyd Nolan and the rest of the cast. (Perhaps 'heroic' performances is more accurate given how often everyone on screen is soaked either from being immersed shoulders deep or from having spray blown onto them.) Often compared to Hitchcock's Lifeboat, which, I think, is a bit of apples & oranges as the claustrophobic locations are similar but the core plots distinct. Lifeboat is the earlier film and, not surprisingly, even though he had to make it up as he went along Hitchcock captured the claustrophobic feeling somewhat better. But director Richard Sale does a very good job as well and I would guess he probably had Lifeboat memorized before production started on Abandon Ship.
David Langton, Gordon Jackson and Laurence Naismith have small parts: Langton and Jackson would work together again as the characters Richard Belamy and Angus Hudson, respectively, in the outstanding BBC series Upstairs, Downstairs of the early 1970s. Naismith plays the briefly surviving captain and the following year would play the Titanic's captain EJ Smith in A Night to Remember - not a lucky actor when given the command of a celluloid ship.
Not flawless and perhaps a bit dated, but still a rather powerful, disturbing film. If this sort of story appeals, I recommend it very highly.
XYZ