SAN DEMETRIO, LONDON
UK, 1943, 104 minutes, Black and white.
Walter Fitzgerald, Ralph Michael, Robert Beatty, Mervyn Johns, Frederick Piper, Gordon Jackson.
Directed by Charles Frend.
San Demetrio, London is a merchant navy ship. The film focuses on a journey it made from Galveston to the United Kingdom, and its being bombarded by a U-boat. The crew manage to escape – but a group in a lifeboat, rowing for two days, came across the hulk of the ship again. They were able to reboard, put out the oil fires, get the boat going and were able to sail back to Ireland. The film was based on a true story, most of the characters correspond to real life, especially Chief Engineer Charles Pollard who took charge of the return trip.
The film is done in a kind of documentary style, as well as being a film for the war effort. A group of veteran British actors who appeared in films for forty to fifty years comprise the cast: Walter Fitzgerald, Ralph Michael, Canadian Robert Beatty, Mervyn Johns, Frederick Piper and a young Gordon Jackson.
The film was directed by Charles Frend, an editor of some of Hitchcock’s films and MGM British-made films like The Citadel and A Yank at Oxford. Within ten years he was to direct The Cruel Sea and a number of the more serious of Ealing Studios films. The screenplay was co-written with Robert Hamer, also an Ealing Studios director who directed Alec Guinness in Kind Hearts and Coronets as well as Father Brown. This was an Ealing Studios film for the war effort.
1.The film based on a true story? Credible? A documentary-style feature?
2.The film for the war effort, released in 1943, Britain and its experience of the war, the bombardments of London, the U-boats in the Atlantic, the need for the merchant navy to go to the United States for oil?
3.The black and white photography, the details of the ship? On the Atlantic? The bombardment? The interiors of the ship and getting it going again? An air of realism? Musical score?
4.The introduction to the ship, to the mission, going to Galveston? The need for oil? The captain, the crew? Introduction to the various members of the crew? Yank Preston and Galveston, his drinking, wanting to enlist in the Royal Air Force?
5.The members of the crew and the film’s delineation of their characters? Their manner of speaking? The understated British humour? Charles Pollard and his ingenuity in getting the ship to return to England? Hawkins and his being in charge? Preston, his work on the ship, drinking, with the British? His help in getting the ship back – and the tribute to him at the end? Boyle, Jameson as his brother-in-law, buying things for his wife, his illness on the boat, the pathos of his death, funeral? Jock Jameson, young, his friendship with his brother-in-law? On the return, the food, the cups of tea – and the danger of the explosion? Pollard risking it for the cup of tea? The other members of the crew?
6.The captain and the men in the boats (*or boat? Couldn’t quite hear) being rescued? Taken to Newfoundland?
7.The voyage back, putting out the fires, getting the engines going, cleaning up? The good fellowship? The jokes, the hard work? The lottery as to which country they would land in? Ireland?
8.The insurers and their comments about compensation? The court case and the hearing? The tribute by the judge?
9.A World War Two achievement? Interesting in later decades?
