We Dive at Dawn (1943)

• Year: 1943
• Released: 07 Feb 1944
• Country: United Kingdom
• Adwords: N/A
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036516/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/we_dive_at_dawn
• Metacritics:
• Available in: 720p,
• Language: English, German
• MPA Rating: Not Rated
• Genre: Action, Drama, War
• Runtime: 98 min
• Writer: J.B. Williams, Val Valentine, Frank Launder
• Director: Anthony Asquith
• Cast: John Mills, Louis Bradfield, Ronald Millar
• Keywords: sea, navy, submarine, world war ii, royal navy, baltic sea,

	6.7/10
	52% – Critics
	52% – Audience

We Dive at Dawn Storyline

The crew of submarine H.M.S. Sea Tiger have their leave (and assorted family problems) cut short when they are recalled for a special mission: sink the new German battleship Brandenburg. En route, they learn that their target has entered the heavily defended Baltic. Rather than fail, they follow it. Tension builds as they approach their target. After the attempt, escape seems impossible, unless they can refuel in enemy waters.—Rod Crawford

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We Dive at Dawn Movie Reviews

A tense British war movie — the Sea Tiger hunts the Brandenburg — from 1943, with John Mills and Eric Portman

If you’re in the middle of a ferocious war and it’s still not clear that you’re going to come out on top, among the things you’ll be concerned with is to keep up the morale of the civilians…to demonstrate that our troops have the bravery, the resourcefulness and the dedication to overcome all the odds in a noble cause. And that’s just what director Anthony Asquith provided the British with 1943’s naval war film, We Dive at Dawn. After more than 60 years, it’s not surprising that some of the movie is dated. It doesn’t help that the class stereotypes which help define the enlisted men from the officers can be jarring. Here, as in so many other British war films, the men invariably have thick regional working class accents while the officers speak with an educated fluency that would place them at home in England’s finest ruling-class establishments. In this movie, Freddie Taylor (John Mills), the captain of the submarine Sea Tiger, is clever, confident, resourceful, aggressive, in control, good with his men, humorous with his peers, quick to make a decision. And it helps that he’s lucky. His men are jolly tars, for the most part, competent at their jobs and always ready with a joke when things get tense. Although we spend the first third of the movie getting to know these people while they’re on leave, after that things get tense quickly.

Taylor and his sub are ordered to destroy the Brandenburg, a new German battleship. They just miss the ship when it enters the Kiel Canal and heads into the Baltic. Taylor assesses the risks and decides the Sea Tiger will go after it, through mine fields, anti-sub nets and with a real risk of not having enough fuel to return to home base. After several tense situations, the confrontation takes place. The Sea Tiger lets loose six torpedoes but has to dive, not knowing if it had done its job. After a clever subterfuge, Taylor outfoxes a couple of German destroyers but then realizes there is not enough fuel. He plans to scuttle his sub and surrender when, just at the last moment, James Hobson (Eric Portman), a seaman who had been sullen and a loner and who speaks German, says there is a small Danish coastal village that had been a fuel depot. He thinks it might still be for the Germans. The last third of the movie is a rousing action sequence as the crew of the sub attempts to hold off the Germans long enough to pump in enough fuel to get the Sea Tiger back to Britain. This is a wartime propaganda movie, so don’t expect failure. And did the Sea Tiger actually put the Brandenburg down? Are the men reunited with their wives and sweethearts? Did Hobson have a reconciliation with his wife and small son that left him smiling for once? Did Freddie Taylor finally have a chance to make use of all those female names in his little black book? You’ll have to see the movie.

There are propaganda war movies and there are propaganda war movies. Some, like Powell’s and Pressburger’s One of Our Aircraft Is Missing and The 49th Parallel, still stand up to viewing today because the stories are solid and unexpected and the creators didn’t use obvious shorthand clichés. Others, like We Dive at Dawn, were made with enough clichés that when watching we have to remind ourselves how dire the time was when the film was made. Still, Asquith can build a lot of suspense even with a few clichés. The Sea Tiger’s forcing its way through a sub net was tense. The stalking of the Brandenburg and the plotting needed for the torpedo firing was realistic; John Mill’s no-nonsense attitude while he prepared to attack was well-handled. The fake-out preparations to make the Sea Tiger look as if it had been destroyed by depth charges was as realistic, inside the sub as well as out, as you could hope for, and the battle for the fuel depot was dramatic and exciting. We Dive at Dawn is not a classic war film, but it’s a well-made, well-acted example of its type and time.

John Mills, it’s worth noting, had a long, long career. Especially in the Fifties he played in a number of serious-minded films looking back at those WWII days. He had the quality of showing grit, cheerfulness and perseverance, but of also being trustworthy, a man England could be proud of as he fought the war. Top-billed in this movie was Eric Portman, a fine actor with a unique voice and the ability to give stares so cold you’d want to put on a sweater. Everyone on the sub is very much in the joking but stiff-upper-lip mode, but Portman manages some complexity for his character. Mills and Portman did fine jobs working together on this film.

The British Navy is always welcome in Denmark!

Any film about WWII made during WWII by a British production company has no latter-day peer in my opinion, respectfully. The confluence of so many things near and dear to my heart are in At Dawn We Dive: as a descendant of Admiral Horatio Nelson and student of all aspects of World War Two and particularly naval warfare, I favor depictions of subs and action in the North Atlantic and especially those which include the German side of things. For those unacquainted with target priorities, an attack on an enemy warship is the greatest event that a submarine can hope to encounter and such a rare opportunity would develop surprisingly similarly to what we see here. The pacing is deliberate and typical of the works coming out of the Ealing, Rank and British-Gaumont studios back in the day: frankly I prefer its quieter, more cerebral approach for its humanity and realism that engages far better than any over-produced Hollywood movie ever could. This reminds me of Powell and Pressburger’s The 49th Parallel thanks to the powerfully persuasive Eric Portman, a favorite of mine. John Mills receives second billing and a smaller font in the titles, so this is clearly meant to be Mr. Portman’s film but the whole cast shines. As for the title sequence, am I the only one who is utterly charmed by Gainsborough Production’s lovely pre-CGI Gainsborough Girl?

The war-time Brits versus Hollywood

A Gainsborough Picture, made at Gaumont British Studios, Shepherd’s Bush. Neither copyrighted nor theatrically released in the U.S.A. Released in the U.K. through General Film Distributors: 28 June 1943. Presented by J. Arthur Rank. London opening at the Odeon, Leicester Square: 20 May 1943. Australian release through 20th Century-Fox: 7 September 1944 (sic). 8,557 feet. 95 minutes. (NTSC available on a VCI DVD; PAL available on a Simply Media DVD or an ITV Silver Collection disc).

SYNOPSIS: A British submarine receives orders to sink a Nazi battleship.

NOTES: Made with the co-operation of the Admiralty and the officers and men of His Majesty’s submarines. The Navy did not think the original Williams-Valentine script “sufficiently authentic”, so Launder was engaged. He revised the script with the help of an experienced submarine officer.

COMMENT: No greater contrast can be found than that between the war- time propaganda movies made by England and the USA. The Hollywood product is full of false heroics and exaggeratedly racist bravado (“One of us is worth ten of them”), glamorized action and an enormous amount of dame-chasing on leave. The British movies are soberly realistic to a fault (you actually go away from “We Dive At Dawn” with more than a passing knowledge of the interior workings of a submarine); little attempt is made to glamorize war and give it a glossy sheen of high adventure (although there is plenty of tension, war is usually shown in all its horror and futility and mindless waste); whilst the Germans are invariably presented as lacking the quick wits of the English, they are still a force to be taken extremely seriously; and leaves are usually spent quietly with families in environs far removed from high- stepping night clubs.

On the other hand, both American and British war pictures usually devote a great deal of their screen time to filling in the characters of a select group of officers and men. Whilst the Hollywood writers often fall back on stereotypes and stock characters, their British counterparts are more successful in presenting a diverse and more interesting range of personnel. The English have never been afraid of eccentrics and non-conformists, whereas to an American scriptwriter, any character who doesn’t conform simply has to redeem himself by some heroic act in the final reel. The British certainly believe in team spirit, but the Americans demand total subjection to predetermined rules of conduct.

“We Dive At Dawn” is an excellent example of the British school. Well-rounded, interesting characters are soberly, and realistically acted by a large group of fine players with whom we can sympathize and identify. A great deal of the action is fascinatingly concerned with the details of submarine command. And the film has been put together with admirable competence and professionalism but without overt flashiness or unrealistic special effects.

Asmittedly, “We Dive at Dawn” takes a fair while to get cracking, what with all the boat-side camaraderie as the various characters are introduced. In these early sections of the film we feel too that the two star performances, Portman (top-billed, though his is the subsidiary role) and Mills are somewhat lacking in depth. In fact they both seem too brusque to be totally convincing. However, Mills and Portman do settle down and grow as the story progresses. And some of the other below-decks business, particularly the running gag with the Arabella tattoo, also becomes more enthralling and/or amusing.

Of curse, once the action really starts, with its surprising semi- documentary insistence on all the details and actual mechanics of the attack, this movie achieves a realism, a verisimilitude, a naturalistic tautness and tension worthy of Asquith’s best work. Even Jack Cox’s drab, gray-toned lighting photography comes into its own. Topped by an all-action climax.