Sink the Bismarck! [VHS]

I've always liked this British film, which tells how the Royal Navy went after and finally destroyed the German super battleship Bismarck in the spring of 1941. The Bismarck was newer, faster, more heavily armored and more powerful than any single ship the British could throw against her. Her job was to destroy convoys, and it was the convoys that were keeping Britain alive and in the war. As the movie points out, the Bismarck could stand off and sink every ship in a convoy and never take enemy fire herself. The British find out that the Bismarck and her accompanying battle cruiser have broken out into the North Atlantic. The task of the Admiralty is to locate the Bismarck, bring naval resources to bear against her, and then take whatever risks they must to destroy her. She is powerful enough that, in the first battle when she is engaged by the British battleship HMS Hood, Bismarck blows the Hood out of the water. From a crew of 1,500, only three survived.

The human face of the drama is in the operations of the Admiralty's War Room, led by the chief of operations Captain Jonathan Shepard (Kenneth More). Shepard is a by-the-book officer, smart but up-tight. He had his ship sunk out from under him in the Mediterranean and he lost his wife to German bombs during a London raid. His only son serves in the air wing assigned to HMS Ark Royal, which soon will be assigned to the chase.

In the course of the movie we witness the maneuvering to locate and then bring the Bismarck to decisive battle. There is the first naval engagement in which the Hood is destroyed and the Bismarck is slightly damaged, but now has a slow fuel leak. There is the air attack with torpedos that manages to damage the Bismarck's rudder, slowing her down and making maneuvering impossible. There is the second air attack and the convergence of British ships which finally pound the Bismarck into scrap metal before sinking her. This is one of those movies where the end is known, but the getting there is so engrossing that it carries you along.

I like several things about this movie. It always is made clear as the action progresses what the strategic choices the British had. We can grasp the limited naval resources available, the calculated risks which had to be made concerning where the Bismarck might go and what it would take to, first, slow her down, and, second, to concentrate enough ships and planes against her to destroy her. The movie's battle scenes are well handled. We get a good look at what it takes to bring a ship of war to battle and then to engage. The movie also refrains for the most part in making the Germans caricatures. The center piece of the movie, the role of Captain Shepard, is very well handled by Kenneth More. More was an actor who excelled in playing energetic, optimistic, decisive characters. He is subdued here, but brings a strong dose of dedicated competence to the role.

The movie's one big weakness, and by no means a fatal one, is the role of Second Officer Ann Davis played by Dana Wynter. The movie makers seemed to feel that the basic story wasn't enough and that a warm character and a hint of romance was needed. Davis is a WREN officer who always seems to be about, but whose main jobs seem to be carrying files, serving tea, making sympathetic observations, and looking at Captain Shepard with increasing admiration. The character is always immaculately groomed. Not off-putting, but perhaps not necessary.

In my view, this is a solid, intelligent war movie. The DVD picture and audio are just fine.

This is based on C.S 'Hornblower' Forrester's novel and gives people who were in the battle fictional names. The film starts with Captain Shepard (Kenneth More) taking command of the Ops room in the Admiralty. Shepard lost his destroyer at Narvik at the hands of Admiral Karl Lutjens.
The film wastes no time in getting to the chase as it were and is full of excellent action scenes and performances. Kenneth More steals the film in my humble opinion supported ably by Dana Wynter and Geoffrey Keen (the Minister from James Bond). More is effectively 'reunited' with Laurence Naismith who played Captain Smith in "A Night to Remember" alongside More.
The film uses exact replicas of the Bismarck, Hood, Prince of Wales for the battle sequences and is used excellently when the Swordfish attack.

An added bonus is that Ed Murrow himself appears in brief scenes 'replaying' his "This is London" broadcasts.

SINK THE BISMARCK was produced as a factual account of the epic battle, overlaid with a thin patina of fiction involving a couple of the characters in order to put the events into human perspective. Specifically, Kenneth More stars as Captain Shepard, the new Director of Operations in the Admiralty's War Room, and Dana Wynter as his assistant, Lt. Anne Davis. It's Shepard's enormous bad luck that the German's decide to send the new battleship Bismarck on its first combat sortie (Operation Rheinübung) into the Atlantic during his initial day on the job. And, though Wynter is positively stunning in her "Wren" (WRNS, Women's Royal Naval Service) uniform, the acting, at least in the War Room, shows a distinct British reserve unlikely to elicit more than a tepid "Good show, what" from any viewer. But, after all, the story is principally about the great ships involved, and ships' models don't get considered for Oscars.

As far as it goes, the film's narrative is commendably consistent with the facts surrounding the Bismarck's departure from its home waters, its detection between Iceland and Greenland, the catastrophic destruction of HMS Hood, the pursuit by assorted ships of the Royal Navy, the Bismarck's ultimately fatal crippling by air attack, and the last battle when the Home Fleet finally brought its quarry to bay. However, there were several departures from accuracy as perceived in a recent PBS television presentation concerning deep dives to the wrecks of the Hood and the Bismarck, and other sources:

1. In the film, two British Swordfish torpedo bombers were destroyed by anti-aircraft fire during two attacks on the Bismarck. In fact, none of the planes were lost, a fact I find amazing since the obsolete biplanes appeared so slow that they could have been brought down by well thrown rocks.

2. The film has a destroyer, the HMS Solent, being sunk by the Bismarck late in the pursuit. In fact, no other ship other than the Hood was sunk by the German battleship during the chase. Moreover, I could find no record of such a named ship in other descriptions of the battle where all ships are accounted for.

3. The German fleet commander Admiral Lütjens (Karel Stepanek) aboard the Bismarck is portrayed as an ardent Nazi, who stands in awe when Hitler sends him birthday congratulations. In fact, according to the Admiral's son in the PBS presentation, Lütjens had so little regard for Hitler that he (Lütjens) refused to give him (Hitler) the Nazi salute, but rather the traditional military salute of the German Navy.

SINK THE BISMARCK also gives the false impression that the Bismarck's end was fairly quick. Rather, the last battle lasted for 74 minutes, during which time four heavy British warships pounded their prey with 2,876 shells. Lastly, and most sadly, the film fails to show the roughly 700 German sailors (of the 800 that got off the Bismarck alive) that the Royal Navy left in the water to die. The British ships had to suspend rescue operations prematurely in fear of the German U-boats reported to be in the area. On the other hand, the film does leave the audience with the apparently accurate view that the Bismarck, by then a burning hulk, was sent to the bottom by destroyer-launched surface torpedoes. It's been reported that the ship's commander, Captain Lindemann, had ordered the vessel to be scuttled when its guns were rendered inoperative, and this is what ultimately sent the battleship to the bottom. Video of the hull taken by the submersible sent to the wreck in 2001 supports the contention that the torpedoes inflicted enough damage to do the job with or without Lindemann's help.

SINK THE BISMARCK is an above average depiction of that once-upon-a-time in naval warfare when the big ships could, and did, duel it out with heavy guns within sight of each other. The fact that this film is also the only one that I know of which deals those events of May 1941 certainly doesn't hinder my award of 4 stars. It's worth seeing by World War II buffs.