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A secret Navy mission, a Frisco launching on Christmas Day. "You may be infants in the submarine service, but you'll be veterans by the time we make port again." Tokyo Bay by way of the Aleutians, plenty of time to get to know the crew. The rookie (Robert Hutton), the Greek-American hothead (Dane Clark), the meteorologist who speaks the lingo (John Ridgely), the cook who plays Santy Claus (Alan Hale), the horndog who luxuriates in the memory of his pick-ups (John Garfield). The skipper is lauded for his "plain intestinal fortitude," and he's got Cary Grant's grace under pressure to boot. Mt. Fuji in the iris opening of the periscope is the central image, surrounded by brushes with danger and narrow escapes. "Join us in holding our breath." Walsh's jocular fluency is the model for Delmer Daves' first directing job, he uses up his forceful camera movements in the preamble and makes himself at home in the vessel's cramped spaces. The nervous disarming of an unexploded bomb goes hand in hand with the thwarted scissors of a frustrated barber, a sturdy interplay of tension and jokes studded with obligatory jingoistic speeches. (The enemy is discussed along the lines of Cummings' "kumrads," a question of love.) The Doolittle Raid, LeRoy in Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo has the complementary view, "give the Emperor the boot for me, will you?" An emergency appendectomy hinges on steak knives filed down to scalpels and the atheist (William Prince) who concludes the makeshift surgery with a murmured "Amen," the retreat unfolds amid screen-shaking mines. "Tokyo got a facelift, we got a flattop." Edwards returns Grant to the tub in Operation Petticoat. With Tom Tully, Warner Anderson, Peter Whitney, Bill Kennedy, Whit Bissell, and Faye Emerson. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |