San Demetrio London

Ok, so much of this is clearly filmed in a great big water tank at Ealing studios against a filmed backdrop that all too often gives that game away, but there’s still the essence of a story of tenacity and courage that is well portrayed here as the oil tanker “San Demetrio” finds itself looking the wrong way down the barrel of the 11-inch guns of the Nazi battleship “Scheer”. Badly damaged and left to the elements, the crew are ordered to abandon ship but after roaming around in the violent Atlantic for two days they happen upon their erstwhile home - and it’s still afloat! Lead by their second officer (Ralph Michael) and engineering chief (Walter Fitzgerald) the men decide their chances aboard are greater than their chances at sea, and so they set about seeing if they can get the ship to the safety of the Clyde. This was made at the height of the war, so of course there’s a certain propagandist element to this depiction of a true story, but that doesn’t detract from the tension that Charles Frend manages to imbue the film with, nor from the solid performances from a stable of recognisable British stalwarts whose job it was was to convince the war-weary audiences of the UK that we were will still fighting, and winning, against what might have seemed to be impossible odds. It’s a tale that conveys just how perilous these convoys were to sail in and to try to protect and the monochrome photography works well in conveying a sense of the cold, the wet, the dark and the danger as these frequently amateur mariners tried to get to grips with their human and more natural and equally unforgiving foes.