There is a long, rich tradition of Battle of the Atlantic movies. I see Greyhound as in conversation with two other movies in particular: The Cruel Sea (1953) and Das Boot (1981). The Cruel Sea, adapted from a novel of the same name by Nicholas Monserrat, follows a British captain and his first officer throughout the entire war (1939-1945). Das Boot, adapted from Lothar-Günther Buchheim’s novel, follows a German U-boat over the course of a single, fateful patrol in 1941. Now, we have Greyhound, adapted from C. S. Forester’s novel The Good Shepherd, following an American captain during a single convoy sailing in early 1942. I think of this like Dunkirk: we’re telling the same story, but from three different viewpoints at three different speeds.
The Cruel Sea is a personal favorite and one of the best war movies ever made. The tone is weary, almost somber, though not grim dark. We follow two ships, a corvette and a frigate, under the command of Jack Hawkins, a merchant navy officer and reservist. A U-boat sinks the corvette part way through, killing many of the characters we’d gotten to know. Hawkins survives, but is traumatized. There is almost no sense of triumph at the end of the film, more of a sense that “well, we survived.” Appropriate for a 1950s Britain conscious of having won the war and lost its empire and place in the world.
Das Boot has the tricky task of being a West German film about World War II from the Nazi German point of view. You’re making a movie where you want the audience to sympathize with the protagonists, while never losing sight of the fact that Germany started the war and will lose it. You can make movies about the Allies losing during World War II–They Were Expendable (1945) and Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) are good examples–but you really can’t make a movie about Germany or Japan winning. Das Boat threads this needle by emphasizing the humanity of the participants and the inhumanity of the war itself. The finale, in which the crew brings their battered U-boat back to France only for it to be sunk in an air raid and many of them killed, is devastating.
Now comes Greyhound in 2020. Sonny Bunch picked up on the overt religiosity of Tom Hanks’ captain. He’s shown praying for guidance. He has a prayer card. He says a silent grace at meals. An at-seal burial is shown. There is a similar scene in The Cruel Sea, but it’s shorter, and wordless. Eisenhower’s message to his troops before D-Day called their effort “the Great Crusade.” In American memory World War II is “the last good war” (explaining that to a German is a fascinating experience), but it’s also more than that. It’s a just war, and Americans are God’s instruments.
Consider too the position of Hanks’ character. He’s senior to other officers, but this is his first command. Early establishing shots on the bridge of his ship emphasize how much older he is than his officers and men. There’s an early moment where he makes a decision that they clearly don’t agree with, though he turns out to be right. He has three other ships under his command: a British destroyer, a Polish destroyer, and a Canadian corvette. He has to work to establish his authority over them. At the end of the convoy battle, a fresh British force arrives to relieve him, and the attitude is very much that of a superior complimenting a subordinate who did better than expected. This is the United States going to war in early 1942: confident of its messianic purpose, but inexperienced, a junior partner to the battle-hardened British.
The effects work is a mixed bag. The medium- and long-distance shots of the convoy are gray and weightless. It’s better than playing World of Warships, but I miss the practical effects of the earlier films. The Cruel Sea, filmed in 1953 in black-and-white, made good use of contemporary newsreel footage. Das Boot built a replica U-boat, which can also be seen in Raiders of the Lost Ark. On the other hand, the close-in work on the American destroyer as it maneuvers in combat is pretty good. The pacing is propulsive, never letting up, which feels right for a running convoy battle. You realize at the end that Hanks probably hasn’t slept in two days, but he and his crew have emerged from the crucible.
The Cruel Sea opens with a narration by Hawkins: “This is a story of the Battle of the Atlantic, the story of the ocean, two ships, and a handful of men. The men are the heroes; the heroines the ships. The only villain is the sea, the cruel sea that man has made more cruel.” The Germans are not depicted at all, except for a brief sequence in which Hawkins’ ship rescues some survivors of a sunken U-boat. Hawkins and his first officer, Donald Sinden, observe them dispassionately, remarking on their common humanity. This is a change from the novel, in which one of those captured is an arrogant, pro-Nazi officer. Das Boot includes a harrowing scene in which the German U-boat surfaces to sink a burning tanker and discovers that some of her crew are still on board. It’s an opportunity to illustrate the mutual horror of war, and further torture the soul of Jürgen Prochnow’s captain.
Golden Age war movies tended to depict the German military (in contrast to the Gestapo and SS) as honorable opponents. That’s after a generation of the “Clean Wehrmacht” myth setting in, and the contemporaneous political reality of West German rearmament. The Cruel Sea is an earlier work, but the postwar East/West split was well underway. Das Boot, in contrast, was made against the backdrop of worsening relations between the United States and the Soviet Union. Germany would have been ground zero in any armed conflict between the two blocs.
Greyhound isn’t sure about its German opponents. When the destroyer sinks its first U-boat and a crewman cheers about 50 dead Germans, Hanks reflects, almost to himself, “50 souls.” Later, however, there are multiple scenes depicting nearby German U-boats breaking in over talk-to-ship to harass and trash-talk the Allied escorts. Aside: I don’t know how true to life that is; Clay Blair’s exhaustive two-volume history of the Battle of the Atlantic doesn’t mention such acts. It seems like a good way to give away your position through direction-finding.
I’m not sure this works for hardening the audience’s attitude about the subject matter. One of the most terrible things about World War II specifically is that most ships were oil-fired instead of coal-fired, so a sinking ship released its oil into the water. Any survivors wound up coated in oil, and it got into their lungs. It’s a terrible way to die. Both The Cruel Sea and Das Boot depict this. Greyhound depicts the choice between rescuing survivors and hunting the enemy, but doesn’t really engage with the horror of being sunk. Nothing approaches the scene in The Cruel Sea, where a U-boat has submerged beneath a group of survivors in the water, and Jack Hawkins has decided to drop depth charges. Maybe he’ll sink the U-boat, but he’ll definitely kill the survivors. The film doesn’t shrink from his decision or the consequences.
Where I’m going here is that while I enjoyed this well enough for what it is, the movie I would like is an American counterpart to The Cruel Sea and Das Boot. This movie isn’t that. What story could illustrate the American experience? You could tell the story of Operation Drumbeat, when in late 1941 and early 1942 an unprepared United States faced down a U-boat assault on the US East Coast. You could tell the story of how American science and industry eventually overwhelmed an outmatched opponent while the US Navy learned anew how to fight. The Hanks character works in those stories. This is fine entertainment and doesn’t mislead, but it could have been more.