Reviewed by hitchcockthelegend 8 / 10 A submarine bursting at the seams It might be a typical Hollywood 'bomber-crew' movie but it is far from a Hollywood ending. Clement skillfully builds the atmosphere and explores the conflicts that inevitably develop and offers no respite. They make two stops en route, once to hijack a doctor after one of the passengers is injured and once in Africa where Marcel Dalio - the sole 'name' in the cast - has a warehouse. Les Maudits is arguably the star in his crown albeit he 'borrowed' the idea of hell as other people from Sartre and it's hardly new to use a small space as a microcosm of a larger society nevertheless - and without the use of major stars - he is able to rack up the tension like the master he is in this Henri Jeanson scripted tale of what might be called a Ship Of Foils, a mixed bag of Nazis, businessmen, mistresses etc all for one reason or another anxious to get to South America via submarine at the tail-end of the war. Beginning with La Bataille du rail at the very end of hostilities he returned to it in Le pere tranquil, Jeux Interdits and Paris, Brule-e-til. If there were such a position as Poet Laureate of the Second World War then Rene Clement would surely be a strong candidate for office. Reviewed by writers_reign 8 / 10 Sub-Standard? On The Contrary The atmosphere soon becomes unbreathable. Gilbert will be forced to share the restricted space of the submarine with the fugitives. While they sail in the Bay of Biscay, off the shores of the liberated French port of Royan, they manage to kidnap a French doctor to have him look after a wounded passenger. In Oslo on April 19th 1945, in the Third Reich's last days, a group of Nazis and sympathizers (a Wehrmacht general, an SS commander, his "assistant," an Italian industrialist and his wife who is also the general's lover, and a French collaborator) board a submarine that will take them to South America, where they hope to find refuge.
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