The Enemy Below
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ny6oZED1Hm8
RT 1Hr 37m
The Enemy Below is a 1957
DeLuxe Color war film in
CinemaScope, which tells the story of the battle between an
American destroyer escort and a German
U-boat during
World War II. The movie stars
Robert Mitchum and
Curt Jürgens as the American and German commanding officers, respectively, and was directed and produced by
Dick Powell. The film was based on a novel by
Denys Rayner, a British naval officer involved in anti-submarine warfare throughout the
Battle of the Atlantic.
For the audible effects,
Walter Rossi received the 1958
Academy Award for
Best Special Effects.
[2]
The American
Buckley-class destroyer escort USS
Haynes detects and attacks a German
U-boat that is on its way to rendezvous with a German
merchant raider in the South
Atlantic Ocean.
Lieutenant Commander Murrell (
Robert Mitchum), a former officer in the
merchant marine now an active duty officer in the
Naval Reserve, has recently taken command of
Haynes, even though he is still recovering from injuries incurred in the sinking of his previous ship. Before the U-boat is first spotted, one
sailor questions the new captain's fitness and ability. However, as the battle begins, Murrell shows himself to be a match for wily U-boat
Kapitän zur See von Stolberg (
Curd Jürgens), a man who is not enamored with the Nazi regime, in a prolonged and deadly battle of wits that tests both men and their crews. Each man grows to respect his opponent.
Murrell skillfully stalks the U-boat and subjects von Stolberg and his crew to hourly
depth charge attacks. In the end, von Stolberg takes advantage of Murrell's too-predictable pattern of attacks and succeeds in
torpedoing the destroyer escort. Although the
Haynes is fatally wounded and sinking, it is still battle capable, and Murrell has one last trick up his sleeve. He orders his men to set fires on the deck to make the ship look more damaged than it actually is. Then he orders the majority of his crew to evacuate in the
lifeboats, but retains a skeleton crew to man the
bridge, engine room, and one of his ship's three-inch (76 mm) guns. As Murrell had hoped, von Stolberg decides to surface before firing his torpedoes. Murrell orders his gun crew to fire first at the U-boat's stern to immobilize it, and then at the U-boat's
deck gun. Murrell orders his
executive officer,
Lieutenant Ware (
Al Hedison), to
ram the U-boat. With his boat sinking, von Stolberg orders his crew to set
scuttling charges and abandon ship.
Murrell, the last man aboard, is about to join his crew in the lifeboats when he spots von Stolberg standing on the conning tower of the sinking U-boat with his injured executive officer,
Oberleutnant zur See Heini Schwaffer (
Theodore Bikel). Murrell tosses a line to the submarine and rescues the pair. It is clear that Schwaffer is dying, but von Stolberg refuses to leave his friend behind. Ware returns with American and German sailors in the
captain's gig to take the three men off before the U-boat's scuttling charges detonate. Later, aboard another American ship, the German crew consigns Schwaffer's remains to the deep in a
traditional ceremony, as the American crew respectfully watches.
Curt Jürgens was imprisoned in 1944 in an internment camp in Hungary by order of Nazi propaganda minister
Joseph Goebbels during World War II. Contrary to some reports, it was not a death camp. He was released when the war ended.
[3] Theodore Bikel was an immigrant Austrian Jew who was born in
Vienna, Austria, in 1924. He and his family fled to America by way of
Palestine in 1937.
[4]
