Douglas Sirk was finally an uneven director.It goes without saying that his masterpieces are melodramas and that the middle of his career contains his weakest efforts ,with the possible exception of "the first legion" a curious religious film and "thunder on the hill" another somewhat religious one.
MYSTERY SUBMARINE 1950A rather strange Nazi's in South America mixed in with cold war monkey business film. The film is set several years after the end of World War Two.
This seemingly forgotten and generally unavailable film withstands the years as a war film involving a British crew captained by Edward Judd aboard a captured German sub, their mission to infiltrate a German submarine "wolf pack" and give HQ its coordinates.
Her husband was killed during the war. Yet Märta Torén is told that he is alive.
This is a fairly routine and predictable World War 2 submarine action film.Second billed is James Robertson Justice but he barely appears for more than 5 minutes.
Not every film of a great director is filled with identifying and interesting touches, and this is a case in point. (Having sat through three such films yesterday -- the others being "Slightly French" and "Sleep, My Love" -- the point was made ad nauseum.
I'm not a Douglas Sirk fan, but this one I thought was masterfully directed. Stunningly photographed too by Clifford Stine!
*** This review contains spoilers *** This movie shows just how much you could do in 1950 with but a small budget, some ingenuity in the writing, and, as film-makers of the day used to say, "the cooperation of the United States Navy".The premise is that a German U-boat has escaped the general German surrender at the end of World War Two five years earlier and is practicing piracy out of an improvised hidden base somewhere in South America.
