For some reason I never thought of Wayne as playing the role of a German sea captain. Well, he does here and does very well indeed in this very entertaining film. Here he has a decent script to work with that gives him an opportunity to shine. Both Wayne and Turner seem to grow in their respective roles.
The film looks and sounds great on DVD with its original CinemaScope aspect ratio intact. A very entertaing film set on the high seas. Enjoy.
An Unusual FIlm for the Duke
In this sea drama John Wayne plays the same type of rugged individualist that he always did but there is a surprise. He plays a loyal German sea captain during the opening days of World War II and does so in a distinctly sympathetic fashion. This may at first seem counterintuitive for John Wayne fans but the key is that he is not a Nazi. In fact, he is an outspoken critic of the Nazi party. That is how he finds himself cashiered from the German navy and in command of a tramp steamer.
The captain finds himself in Australia at the outbreak of the war. He breaks out in an attempt to bring his ship safely back to Germany. Though he loathes the regime, he is a loyal German. Getting to Germany is only the least of his problems. He is saddled by his consulate with the transport of a German spy in the form of Femme Fatale, Lana Turner. To make matters worse, his second officer is an ardent Nazi who thinks nothing of committing the occasional atrocity against shipwrecked seamen. The icing on the cake is the Royal Navy warship that pursues him across the South Pacific with an old family friend aboard her as one of the officers.
Throughout the entire ordeal, Wayne portrays the captain as a man dedicated to his own ideals and his own conception of valor. This makes dealing with Nazis, spies, mutinous crewmen and friend in the opposing navy just that much more difficult.
Wayne is often criticized for playing the same one dimensional character over and over again. I see him as playing parts he believes in over and over again. He generally does a good job of it and this film is no exception. Principles have a price and Wayne pays the price, doing so with gallantry.
A rather strange role for the Duke, but a great fim!
I just recently stumbled onto this movie while searching through Amazon for war movies, and hesitated getting it because I had never heard of it before. Though available through Amazon channels on VHS, it wasn't the easiest to obtain. I finally got it on VHS though, and immediately found it to be a great little movie. It is now, of course, available on DVD, thankfully.
As my title suggests, and other reviewers have already noted, this is a strange role for the Duke. It is hard to imagine him as anything but an all-American hero. That being said, he put in a performance equal to any he has done before or after this movie. The beautiful Lana Turner added a valuable dimension to the film, and I was amazed at the number of familiar faces in the picture. As the movie was made in 1955, some of the more familiar faces were just getting started, and have become familiar to us after seeing them in many other films or on TV. Tab Hunter, Alan Hale, Jr (Skipper on Gilligan's Island), James Arness (Gunsmoke) are just a few. You'll be surprised at how many others you will recognize.
The story is a simple one. John Wayne has been demoted to a tramp steamer after, what must have been, an honorable career in the German Navy. He "earned" this demotion after making his opposition to the Nazis common knowledge. Even though he has no use for Hitler and crew, he is a German nationalist through and through. His aging ship is docked in Australia as the invasion of Poland by Hitler and the Nazis begins, bringing England and, of course, Australia to war with Germany. He has two choices--either being interned in Australia, along with his crew, or making a run for home. The title tells you what choice he makes. Lana Turner is a German agent "engaged" to a British Naval officer. This officer happens to be an old friend of Wayne's from a previous life. One thing leads to another, and she ends up with Wayne when he leads his ship in a breakout. Her "ex" becomes a lead officer in the chase across the seas, and the plot thickens from here on. Confused? Not if you see the movie. The ending is a bit unusual and unexpected, at least to me, although you sense something similar has to happen. I won't give it away, but getting to the end is suspensful and entertaining.
The Duke is every bit the true to form hero in this movie, German or not. As others have mentioned, there is no attempt at accents by any, other than the Aussies, and that makes it difficult to see any of them as Germans, especially without the stereotypical Nazi uniforms and insignia.
All-in-all, I enjoyed the movie, and am happy to recommend it and add it to my collection. I am very happy to see it come out on DVD, since it was getting more difficult to find on it VHS. If you have a chance to see it--do. If you collect war genre movies, as I do, it is a valuable addition to any collection.
One of John Wayne's better movies even though it is, perhaps, not as well known.
John Wayne personally produced many of his '50s films, which is why some of them have languished in corporate limbo following his death. The High and the Mighty was one of his most popular vehicles (no pun intended). This long, necessarily sedentary drama aboard an endangered airliner is a CinemaScope bridge between 1932's Grand Hotel and 1970s disaster movies. Despite Wayne's iconic presence as a pilot--now copilot--who survived the plane crash that wiped out his family, it's an ensemble movie with an impressive cast: Robert Stack sharing the cockpit, Oscar® nominees Claire Trevor and Jan Sterling, Laraine Day, Robert Newton, Paul Kelly, John Qualen, Regis Toomey, the ubiquitous Paul Fix, and director William A. Wellman's good-luck character actor Douglas Fowley.... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): John Wayne - Claire Trevor - Laraine Day Director(s): William A. Wellman DVD Release Date: Released the 02 August 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Out of circulation for a quarter-century following the death of producer-star John Wayne, Island in the Sky is a tale of survival focused on the pilot (Wayne) and crew of a DC-3 forced to crashland somewhere in the uncharted Canadian wilderness, and the fellow airmen (Lloyd Nolan, James Arness, Andy Devine, Paul Fix) determined to find them before hunger and the 70-below winter do them in. The movie, set in the post-WWII era when military and commercial aviation were still intertwined, was written by bestselling novelist Ernest K. Gann and directed by William A. Wellman, an aviation-movie veteran whose Wings won the first-ever Academy Award (1927–28).
Wellman resolutely downplays the histrionics and conventional heroics; Wayne indulges in none of the macho... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): John Wayne - Lloyd Nolan Director(s): William A. Wellman DVD Release Date: Released the 02 August 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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I always find this movie a little sad to watch, I guess because John Wayne looks so old and almost feeble here. This is a much different role from the "Cowboys," where he consciously played an old man. This is the kind of movie he should have made five or ten years earlier. In addition, the plot itself is so feeble that if John Wayne and Ben Johnson weren't in it, no one would watch it. Still I feel an obligation to watch it whenever it's on, perhaps out of loyalty to the Duke for all the great movies he made. Even at age 66, he still had an undeniable presence that transcended the quality of a particualr movie. (And Ann Margret's not bad to look at either!) More Info about this DVD Actor(s): John Wayne - Ann-Margret Director(s): Burt Kennedy DVD Release Date: Released the 03 May 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Although scarcely seen in its original 3-D, and entirely out of sight for a decade and a half after its producer-star died, Hondo has maintained a high rep among John Wayne fans--and it wasn't even directed by Howard Hawks or John Ford. (Actually, Ford did shoot some second-unit stuff while visiting Wayne on location.) Half-breed Hondo, companioned only by an antisocial dog, tends to be more sympathetic toward the Apaches than toward the white society he occasionally scouts for. He falls into uneasy friendship with a New Mexico farmwoman (Geraldine Page) whose husband deserts her for long stretches, and whose son (Lee Aaker) is blood brother to the local Apache chieftain. A good, spare frontier tale--Louis L'Amour via James Edward (Angel and the Badman) Grant--in which... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): John Wayne - Geraldine Page Director(s): John Farrow DVD Release Date: Released the 11 October 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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