Sunday 4 February 2024

San Demetrio London (1943 Charles Frend)

A true story about a tanker containing gasoline, that is attacked - the crew bail out into a lifeboat. After two relentless days, they see a ship - it's on fire, it's their ship. So they reboard it, put out fires, attempt to get it back to the British Isles. Officers and crew bond together to make it happen. Robert Hamer wrote this, with Frend and F Tennyson Jesse; he was also the associate producer, and completed the direction when Frend fell ill.

Walter Fitzgerald is the tireless engineer, Ralph Michael the second officer. (Michael and Hamer were reunited on Dead of Night. You feel for the cast, who frequently have to shout their lines over storms, fires, artillery etc.) With Neville Mapp, Barry Letts, Mervyn Johns, Gordon Jackson, Robert Beatty ('Yank'). Photographed by Ernest Palmer (and uncredited Douglas Slocombe), edited by Eily Boland.

The film was made at Ealing Studios. The model work of the ship is excellent.





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