Run Silent, Run Deep (1958)

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Well, written by a WWII, vet, I am sitting here watching it with a WWII, vet, 98 years old!First, nice to see a real submarine dive and surface. I would love to see the cutting room floor!And, nice models, and the interior, for example the TDC, Targeting Directing Computer, is real. Wow. Nickname, the fruit machine.Ok, I looked at the technical side, but I do have a question, who is the black actor. Would like to see what else he did. With Burt, and Clark, and ALL the acting is first class.

This movie holds up quite well more than 50 years following it's release. Any movie that has both Bert Lancaster and Clark Gable is worth watching. There is action from the opening scene until the end. The story is quite plausible, and the cinematography is top notch for it's day.Casting was good except I have a difficult time taking Don Rickles seriously. The story line made sense all the way through. I wish the few lines of the Japanese would have been subtitled, perhaps they were in some versions but not the over-the-air version I just watched.I may add this to my DVD library.

Films about submarine warfare have long been a popular sub-genre of the war film, possibly because their claustrophobic setting allows ample scope for psychological analysis and character development. There were a number produced during and in the years following World War II, such as this one or the British-made "Above Us the Waves", but there have also been more recent examples such as the German "Das Boot" (also about World War II) and "The Hunt for Red October", "Crimson Tide" and "K-19 The Widowmaker", all with a Cold War setting. "Run Silent, Run Deep" shares with the last two films mentioned above the theme of a conflict between the submarine commander and his second- in-command. In all three films the two men have very different personalities and in each case the commander is an obsessive, driven character while his executive officer is more relaxed. All three films cast two major stars opposite one another- Gene Hackman and Denzel Washington in "Crimson Tide", Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson in "K-19" and Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster here. Gable's character, Commander P.J. Richardson, is the captain of a submarine which is sunk by a Japanese destroyer in the Bungo Straits. He persuades the Navy Board to give him command of another submarine, the USS Nerka, thus bringing him into conflict with the Nerka's executive officer, Lieutenant Jim Bledsoe, who possesses the necessary qualifications for command and believes that he should have been promoted to the captaincy. The crew also dislike Richardson, a strict disciplinarian who forces them to go through endless drills, and would much prefer to serve under the more easygoing Bledsoe. As the film progresses it becomes clear that Richardson is obsessed with avenging the loss of his previous submarine by sinking the destroyer responsible, even though he is under orders to avoid the Bungo Straits. The purpose of his repeated drills is to perfect a daring manoeuvre which he believes will give him an advantage over the enemy ship. The film is on one level a tense and exciting action/adventure drama, and works very well as such. On a deeper level, however, it is also a psychological study of the two men and a study in style of leadership. Both Gable and the scriptwriters resisted the temptation to make Richardson a simple villain. Certainly, he is a difficult, prickly character, unpopular with the crew and his subordinate officers. His cavalier interpretation of orders would not win him many friends among his superiors if they knew what he was up to. Yet his leadership inspires his men to brilliant feats of seamanship, enabling them to sink three Japanese vessels. Although on a human level the likable Bledsoe is well-versed in the arts of making friends and influencing people, he is also more cautious and pragmatic. There is a strong implication that, had he been in command, the crew might not have accomplished so much. The two men are very well played by Gable and Lancaster. In 1958 Gable was of course coming to the end of his career- he only had another two years to live, although in that period he was to make another five films- but Lancaster's still had another thirty years to run, and the film came at a time when his career was undergoing a change of direction. Although there had been exceptions, such as "The Killers" and "From Here to Eternity", most of his films from the forties and fifties had been action adventures in which he had played physically demanding roles. For a war film, "Run Silent, Run Deep" does not contain much in the way of physical action- most of the action sequences were created using models- but rather looks forward to the sort of thoughtful, character-driven movies in which Lancaster was to specialise in the sixties and seventies.Robert Wise is today best remembered as the director of those two famous musicals, "West Side Story" and "The Sound of Music", but he was a versatile director who could work in most genres, including films noirs, Westerns, disaster movies and war films. "Run Silent, Run Deep" is never going to equal something like "The Sound of Music" in the affections of the public, but it serves as a very good example of another side of Wise's talents. It rates as one of the best submarine dramas ever made. 8/10

Recently I saw the submarine movie, 'Phantom' and I liked it. This inspired me to look for more submarine movies and I stumbled on to this. This is a brilliant movie. The story line is simple enough. Clark Gable plays captain Rchardson, a submarine commander demoted to a desk job following the sinking of his vessel by the Japanese. He gets another chance to captain a sub. In defiance of orders, he goes after the Japanese destroyer that had sunk his original sub. He has to fight not only the Japanese but also his own lieutenant and a reluctant crew. He eventually triumphs. However, it is a costly victory. Captain dies of the wounds sustained during an action and is buried at sea before the vessel can reach the port. This film reminded me of Captain Ahab and his pursuit of Mobydick. That this old black and white film made more than half a century ago could keep me entranced is proof that this is a great film. After all only classics transcend limits of time and geography. I rate this film as a classic movie.