The Sea Shall Not Have Them (1954)
Directed by Lewis Gilbert

Plot Summary: During WW2, a British bomber is forced down in the North Sea. Trying to keep up moral, the crew talk about their lives awaiting the rescue they are sure will come..

It is good to see a film made about a forgotten branch of the services. When much was made of the R.A.F.Squadrons flying countless missions against the enemy, and rightly so, it is refreshing that "The Sea Shall Not Have Them" shows the work done by the R.A.F. Air Sea Rescue crews. Anthony Steel plays the skipper of 2561, an M.T.B.(Motor Torpedo Boat) assigned to locate and rescue a Hudson bomber that has crash landed in the North Sea. On board the plane along with the rest of the crew, is a V.I.P. with vital German rocket secrets. The film then follows two strands, one showing the air crew (including a young Dirk Bogarde) slowly freezing on the escape dingy, and the M.T.B. crew fighting bad weather, engine failure, and in one incredible scene, a new crew member sets fire to the galley. In another scene a Supermarine Sea Otter flying boat picks up the German pilot who downed the Hudson which returned the favour before it ditched in the sea. Due to rapidly deteriorating weather & rough seas the Sea Otter cannot take off & has to be itself rescued by an M.T.B. The ending although predictable, is nevertheless gripping, and the film will rank along ,with the best of the war movies made in the 1950's.

British viewers should spot a very young Joan Sims, she was 24 when this film was made in 1954, in a cameo roll as Hilda Tebbitt, the worried wife of one of the crewman aboard the M.T.B. at sea as bad weather & night rapidly closes in. She would go on to become a regular in the Carry On films.

Just a little note to add some local interest to this excellent movie - the action takes place at an unnamed Air Sea Rescue station - I am sure most of the interior shots were taken in the studios but the exteriors were shot in Felixstowe, Suffolk where there really was an A/S Rescue station during WWII. The German guns were actually at Landguard Fort, which was just around the spit or point from the A/S Rescue station. The shots of the railway station are likewise taken in what was then Felixstowe Town station. The area where the A/S Rescue station was is now part of the Container Port and I am sure nothing remains of the hangars and docks, but Landguard Fort is still there, minus the guns.

Also directed by Lewis Gilbert the same year was The Good Die Young with an Anglo-American cast including Richard "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" Basehart & Gloria Grahame. Before such British gangster classics as Get Carter (1971) with Michael Caine (not to be confused with the shitty arse American re-make in 2000 with Sly Stallone), The Long Good Friday (1980) with Bob Hoskins & Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) The Good Die Young was one of the better British gangster flicks up to that point. In 1965 Lewis Gilbert produced & directed one of the most ground breaking films of the swinging sixties-Alfie.

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