Convoy (1940) - film review

In 1940, Royal Navy cruiser HMS Apollo returns to base only to be immediately reassigned for a special mission: to escort a convey of merchant ships across the North Sea.  When a civilian ship containing refugees is attacked by a German U-Boat, Lieutenant David Cranford overrides the orders of his captain, Tom Armitage, and sends a destroyer to its aid.  Cranford’s motive is to rescue his former mistress, Lucy Armitage, who he knows is onboard the doomed ship.  Lucy also happens to be the captain’s ex-wife.  Although the crew of HMS Apollo manage to save Lucy and her fellow passengers, they are unaware of a greater threat that awaits them.  A German pocket battleship is heading their way, intent on decimating the entire convoy...

Although enthusiastically received when it was first seen in 1940, this early war film from Ealing Studios now appears hopelessly dated.  Heavily reliant on back-projection and unconvincing models for its action sequences, and with sets that offer the poorest approximation to ships navigating their way through the stormy wastes of the North Sea, the film feels laughably theatrical and has none of the realism that we find in Ealing’s subsequent war films. 

With its stilted dialogue and wooden performances, Convoy looks more like a caricature of the 1940s British war film, complete with stiff-upper lipped officers who are all too willing to die horribly for their country (and die horribly they certainly do) and characters who are able to speak German and quote verbatim Nelson’s prayer on the eve of Trafalgar, as and when required.  Yet, despite the film’s many failings, it is strangely compelling and, to its credit, does not take itself too seriously.  For one thing, it plays the propaganda card far more subtly than most war films of this era.  The film marks the screen debut of Anton Diffring as a U-boat officer, the first in a long line of Nazi portrayals (ironic, as he was a fugitive of Nazi Germany).

Convoy was the third and final film to be directed by Penrose Tennyson, the eldest great-grandson of the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson, who began his career as an assistant to Alfred Hitchcock on The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934).  Tennyson’s first directorial efforts There Ain’t No Justice (1939) and The Proud Valley (1940) (made at Ealing under producer Michael Balcon) earned him instant recognition as one of the most promising young British filmmakers of his day.  Sadly, his early promise was not to be fulfilled, as he died in an aeroplane crash in July 1941, not long after enlisting in the Royal Navy.

© Derek Adamson 2010

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