Prismark10 A straightforward and creaky propaganda film by Anthony Asquith made during the war but at least tries to take into account the working classes and not just the toffs.Lieutenant Taylor (John Mills) and the crew of the submarine Sea Tiger are given some leave after an unsuccessful patrol. Hobson (Eric Portman) goes home to save his marriage as he thinks his wife is cheating on him with the owner of a chip shop. Corrigan (Niall MacGinnis) reluctantly is about to get married. The crew are called back to duty and the submarine is assigned to a mission to sink the German battleship, the Brandenburg.The film has some well staged battle sequences and despite the social class differences it is a film where all the crew pull together, be resourceful and leave their personal domestic issues behind.However this film made with the cooperation of the Admiralty is plodding and unspectacular.

ianlouisiana This is the film "In which we serve" should have been.Unfortunately Mr Coward's starry - eyed love letter to Mountbatten was woodenly directed and totally dominated by "The Master"'s ludicrously mannered performance whereas Puffin Asquith is like David Lean without the pomposity and directs with real flair.This is particularly praiseworthy as he was working completely within the boundaries of propaganda(as was - to be fair,Mr Lean - but Asquith managed to avoid the worst excesses of stereotyping),in particular with his lower deck characters none of whom are the plaster saints so memorably patronised by Mr Coward. The wonderful Mr John Mills is excellent as the submarine commander,posh,yes,they tended to be,but not precious.Never apart from here have I seen a propaganda film where the captain gets shirty with his crew,but you can be sure it happened and it's rather remarkable that in 1942 it should have been shown in cinemas throughout a besieged country. The interior scenes of the submarine in combat have a documentary feel that Asquith's elders and betters failed manifestly to capture. Yes,Mr Portman's northern accent is a bit dodgy at times and his mastery of several languages is never explained,but he typifies what was seen then as typical British "grit",not to say bloody mindedness. "We dive at dawn" deserves to be far better known and is a very good example of a thoughtful,well - made propaganda film.

Terrell-4 If you're in the middle of a ferocious war and it's still not clear that you're going to come out on top, among the things you'll be concerned with is to keep up the morale of the civilians...to demonstrate that our troops have the bravery, the resourcefulness and the dedication to overcome all the odds in a noble cause. And that's just what director Anthony Asquith provided the British with 1943's naval war film, We Dive at Dawn. After more than 60 years, it's not surprising that some of the movie is dated. It doesn't help that the class stereotypes which help define the enlisted men from the officers can be jarring. Here, as in so many other British war films, the men invariably have thick regional working class accents while the officers speak with an educated fluency that would place them at home in England's finest ruling-class establishments. In this movie, Freddie Taylor (John Mills), the captain of the submarine Sea Tiger, is clever, confident, resourceful, aggressive, in control, good with his men, humorous with his peers, quick to make a decision. And it helps that he's lucky. His men are jolly tars, for the most part, competent at their jobs and always ready with a joke when things get tense. Although we spend the first third of the movie getting to know these people while they're on leave, after that things get tense quickly. Taylor and his sub are ordered to destroy the Brandenburg, a new German battleship. They just miss the ship when it enters the Kiel Canal and heads into the Baltic. Taylor assesses the risks and decides the Sea Tiger will go after it, through mine fields, anti-sub nets and with a real risk of not having enough fuel to return to home base. After several tense situations, the confrontation takes place. The Sea Tiger lets loose six torpedoes but has to dive, not knowing if it had done its job. After a clever subterfuge, Taylor outfoxes a couple of German destroyers but then realizes there is not enough fuel. He plans to scuttle his sub and surrender when, just at the last moment, James Hobson (Eric Portman), a seaman who had been sullen and a loner and who speaks German, says there is a small Danish coastal village that had been a fuel depot. He thinks it might still be for the Germans. The last third of the movie is a rousing action sequence as the crew of the sub attempts to hold off the Germans long enough to pump in enough fuel to get the Sea Tiger back to Britain. This is a wartime propaganda movie, so don't expect failure. And did the Sea Tiger actually put the Brandenburg down? Are the men reunited with their wives and sweethearts? Did Hobson have a reconciliation with his wife and small son that left him smiling for once? Did Freddie Taylor finally have a chance to make use of all those female names in his little black book? You'll have to see the movie. There are propaganda war movies and there are propaganda war movies. Some, like Powell's and Pressburger's One of Our Aircraft Is Missing and The 49th Parallel, still stand up to viewing today because the stories are solid and unexpected and the creators didn't use obvious shorthand clichés. Others, like We Dive at Dawn, were made with enough clichés that when watching we have to remind ourselves how dire the time was when the film was made. Still, Asquith can build a lot of suspense even with a few clichés. The Sea Tiger's forcing its way through a sub net was tense. The stalking of the Brandenburg and the plotting needed for the torpedo firing was realistic; John Mill's no-nonsense attitude while he prepared to attack was well-handled. The fake-out preparations to make the Sea Tiger look as if it had been destroyed by depth charges was as realistic, inside the sub as well as out, as you could hope for, and the battle for the fuel depot was dramatic and exciting. We Dive at Dawn is not a classic war film, but it's a well-made, well-acted example of its type and time. John Mills, it's worth noting, had a long, long career. Especially in the Fifties he played in a number of serious-minded films looking back at those WWII days. He had the quality of showing grit, cheerfulness and perseverance, but of also being trustworthy, a man England could be proud of as he fought the war. Top-billed in this movie was Eric Portman, a fine actor with a unique voice and the ability to give stares so cold you'd want to put on a sweater. Everyone on the sub is very much in the joking but stiff-upper-lip mode, but Portman manages some complexity for his character. Mills and Portman did fine jobs working together on this film.

Chris (Asgardian) This movie is all about reality, submarine warfare in WW2 was not a clean precise science. There were no computers giving exact enemy details, there was no precise instrumentation to 100% control the sub. Not all the crew went to fight with a song in their heart, and a smile on their dial.People with expectations of seeing a "pretty war" in this movie will be grossly disappointed, .............. GOOD, they deserve to be disappointed, they deserve to have reality shoved into their face.War is not clean, exact, fought by people about to break into song. It is endured by scared, cold/burnt, hungry, desperate people willing to do anything to survive."We Dive at Dawn" is a fine example portraying a desperate situation needing desperate actions.