New Picture

Convoy (British production; R. K. O. release). The fog is everywhere. The hull of a ship slides out of it: before the stern is visible, the fog hides the hull. A whistle tears the softness with a shriek: the grey blanket settles down more softly than before. Scene: the North Sea, whose oily green waters, even in summer, look cold. Time: World War II. Action: the hushed, relentless pursuit and escape of Nazi and British ships, alternately each other's victims.

There is just enough story to keep the picture, the best of the British war films to date, from being a straight documentary. A cruiser is sent to convoy a fleet of merchant vessels from a European port (presumably Norway) to England. The problem is complicated cinematically because 1) the convoying cruiser's Lieut. Cranford (John Clements) is supposed to have run away with, then deserted the wife of Cruiser Captain Armitage (Clive Brook); 2) crusty old Captain Eckersley (Edward Chapman) of the tramp steamer Seaflower prefers to go it alone, keeps dropping out of the convoy, unconsciously betraying its presence to German U-boats. Aboard the Seaflower is the runaway wife (Judy Campbell) and a hold full of frightened Jewish refugees. By the picture's end Lieut. Cranford has died heroically in battle, Captain Armitage has realized that he loves the sea better than his wife.

The rest, the bigger & better part of Convoy, is the sea, and the deadly hide-and-seek of men and ships on it. Producer Michael Balcon and Director Pen Tennyson have given the picture a realism that makes even The Long Voyage Home look like a studio piece. This realism of the sea is shot through with the realism of sea war. Terror is in the form of ships, the shapes of guns and conning towers. It is in the fog which hides the pursued, but also hides the pursuer. It is under the dark, heaving water; and even in the air, electric with the radio waves that may mean safety, may mean destruction. And there are terrifying shots--the sinking of a submarine, shells bursting on deck armor that squirts and sizzles like a thousand molten firecrackers.

But terror alone could not make Convoy a great war picture. What makes it great is the picture's climax. The seamen stand grimly watching Captain Armitage pace the deck, trying to decide whether to take on the pocket battleship Deutschland with his outclassed cruiser. Battle means almost certain destruction. Suddenly the Captain says he has decided to fight. The men stop gnawing their lips, break into grins.

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