Damn The Defiant!

Damn The Defiant! (the UK title was HMS Defiant) is a good example of a type of movie they don't make anymore. Time was there were many old-timey naval warfare films made, with three-mast ships blasting away at each other. Except for the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, nobody in Hollywood or England has done these films in ages, which is too bad.

Based loosely on actual events, Damn The Defiant! shot in Cinemascope and released in 1962, is set during the Napoleonic Wars, and is kind of Mutiny on the Bounty in reverse, as the captain is the good guy and the first officer is the louse. Alec Guinness is the captain, who is a by the numbers leader who believes in discipline but understands that you can ride a crew too hard. Dirk Bogarde is his first officer, a sadistic creep who relishes the opportunity to flog any minor offender.

Bogarde is constantly questioning Guinness' orders, and the kindly captain would like nothing more than to clap him in irons, but realizes the delicacy of the politics of the matter. Bogarde even goes so far as to use Guinness' son, a junior midshipmen (all of twelve years old) as a pawn in their chess game. But a quelling mutiny, led by Anthony Quayle, plus the French, are bigger pictures in this drama.

I'm unsure if these sea adventures used actual ships or models, as the visuals seem so authentic. There are two battle scenes, and they are aces. Ships just fired cannonballs at each other until they were right next to each other, and the winner would then board the loser and take the goods and hostages. Of course, life was miserable, as the food was frequently worm-ridden and some men would be on a ship for years a time. The British also used "press-gangs" for recruitment--they would go into a port city and just kidnap men and take them aboard. During wartime, this was perfectly legal.

Guinness, as usual, is super-smooth, but I liked the way his anger at Bogarde would bubble up to the surface. Bogarde makes a dandy villain, and he gets his comeuppance.

The last picture of this sort that I can remember was Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World, which was an adaptation of one of Patrick O'Brien's Napoleonic War series. There are several other of O'Brien's books waiting, and since that was a pretty good movie--it was nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture--and made over two-hundred-million dollars, I'm surprised there were no sequels.