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The tale is the definition of claustrophobia so John Ford allows himself a kinetic prologue in the Shanghai saloon, "the burial place of every man's heart." Accordions and ditties, "Frankie and Johnny" and "The Tattooed Lady," old officers seeing ghosts and young seamen swiping drinks off the counter ("Heave 'em to us, undertaker"). Jocular stalwarts like J. Farrell MacDonald and Warren Hymer struggle to remain vertical while smuggling hooch onto the foggy deck, then things get serious as an accident sends their submarine straight to the ocean floor. Green ensign (Frank Albertson) and supervisor with a past (Kenneth MacKenna) are in unsteady command, no response on the radio, one of the sailors offers a suggestion: "Stick your head out the window and yell!" The surviving print combines intertitles with snatches of dialogue, choice sounds include maddening Morse code beeps and dolorous coughing amid low oxygen. The stranded all-male community of The Lost Patrol is already visible, down to the distraught zealot who appoints himself avenging angel and seizes a detonator. "SOS... SOS... SOS..." With water at knee-level and rising, the fellows write letters to mother, reflect ruefully on marriage, contemplate the irony of a toy boat while up above there are rescue ships floating by. The camera descends into the water in tandem with divers, the only sound more ecstatic than their tapping on the metal vessel is Wagner's Vorspiel bubbling up as survivors reach the surface via torpedo tube. The plainest eulogy is best, "he was a good guy..." Pabst follows suit with Kameradschaft. With Paul Page, Walter McGrail, Stuart Erwin, Charles K. Gerrard, George La Guere, Harry Tenbrook, and Warner Richmond. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |