In Harm's Way (1965)

This picture must have felt familiar to John Wayne. Twenty years earlier, he had played a major role in They Were Expendable, another naval story that pretty much begins with the Pearl Harbor attack. Only this time, however, does he get the very top billing, which is saying something when second goes to Kirk Douglas.

Both Rockwell Torrey (Wayne) and Paul Eddington (Douglas) have trouble staying in the military's good graces, Rock for using non-textbook maneuvers to ill effect and Paul for being generally unruly after learning of his wife's unfaithful debauchery. Still, at times like these, the Navy can't be too choosy in whom it retains if not promotes. While on shore, Rock meets his ensign son, Jeremiah, for the first time since Jere was four; their interactions are awkward, of course. All three of these men take special interest in at least one nurse (Rock's nurse being played by Patricia Neal), but war makes having a girlfriend hard even when she's within the same armed force.

My first impression was that this film could easily have been made in the '50s if not the '40s. It's black and white, it has a rather deliberate pace despite the seemingly frantic scenario, and the big names involved (including director Otto Preminger) had been big for quite a while. But the more I think about it, the more I notice ways in which it defies the censorship of earlier decades. Mrs. Eddington's sultry drunken dance in the first scene might squeak by under an enforced Hays Code, but I doubt the coed skinny dipping soon after would, regardless of lack of exposure to the audience. There are even explicit indications of rape and suicide in the third act. (Thanks to inconvenient circumstances, the rapist doesn't face direct punishment, but at least he suffers, and not from sheer guilt.)

All the focal officers in this story have considerable moral failings, almost as if Preminger couldn't resist injecting some of his noir formula. Nevertheless, I did find myself caring about them more than I usually do when watching a war movie. That might be because of the tight focus on a handful of characters with plenty of time not on the move for battle. Or maybe the James Bassett book, Harm's Way, did a good job of fleshing them out for Hollywood.

I have been keeping quiet about the missions partly to avoid spoilers and partly because, well, they don't mean much to me. I paid little attention during the planning, and even the actual fights stirred me only to a point. It's not easy to make ship-to-ship or especially ship-to-sub battles look very good on screen. The jets are less confusing to follow, but they have their own cinematic limits. If you like explosive damage, you may get enough out of the action. Perhaps this says something about how I've changed as a moviegoer, preferring the nuances of human relationships over special effects.

Neal got a BAFTA award, and the cinematographer got nominated for an Oscar, but the overall reception was highly mixed. The relatively simple plot and fairly melodramatic elements struck many viewers as hackneyed. My opinion falls somewhere in between. Once again, I got more engaged as it went along, but it still felt about twice as long as it had to be, at 165 minutes.

For deciding whether to watch, I think your best bet is to weigh how much you like each of the star-studded elements, add them up, and divide the amount in half to approximate probable disappointment. In my case, there was just enough to justify a viewing. For most of my readers, I wouldn't count on it.