calvinnme I say it's an action film rather than a war film because it has a little bit of everything - battle scenes, love scenes, and even some comedy thrown in here and there. It also does something unusual for an MGM film of the era - it doesn't get hammy and it doesn't come up with a contrived happy ending for all involved.Lt. Thomas Knowlton (Robert Montgomery) and Lt. Brick Walters (Robert Young) are the best of friends and also officers aboard a submarine during WWI. At the beginning of the film they get a new commanding officer - Lt. Cmdr. T.J. Toler (Walter Huston). Toler is a strictly by the book commander and seems to rub Knowlton and Walters the wrong way just a bit, though more from his very formal nature than by any unfairness in his command. Knowlton falls in love with Toler's daughter Joan (Madge Evans). The complicating factor here is that Joan is married - she tells him so upfront. This doesn't seem to bother Knowton too much until he finds out exactly why Joan let her foot slip.Conflict between Toler and Knowlton builds not only because of Knowlton's romance with Toler's married daughter, but because Knowlton is unfortunately an officer who thinks sentiment has a place on board a submarine in wartime. Comic relief is provided by long-time MGM contract comedian Jimmy Durante and Eugene Palette as two enlisted men on board the submarine. Sterling Holloway plays what at first seems like comic relief to the comic relief but ends up the centerpiece of a very nightmarish and unforgettable scene that reminds everyone that war truly is hell.Highly recommended as a good action film and one that plays to the strengths of the entire cast.

Scufovo It's funny, I am diving the wreck of one of the ships they sank for the movie tomorrow. The former USS Moody, a WWI destroyer. The filming locations list Hawaii, but not California.A pretty good movie, nice tension, so-so subplots. I enjoyed it. Jimmy Durante was an interesting piece in the mix, he almost pulls you out of the plot at times, but then he meshes perfectly at others. The tension between the CO and XO worked well.Pretty intense death scenes for 1933. I thought the self sacrifice ending was a trifle predictable. Films of this time period used this device with a little too much frequency. It's sometimes tough, critiquing a film that was made that long ago. Still, overall, a nice piece of film making.

schappe1 This was part of a run of old war movies on TCM I caught recently. All of them, (the others were 'Captains of the Clouds' (1942) and 'Pilot #5', (1943)), had the same ending: the protagonist dies heroically on a suicide mission. The movies seemed fixated on the idea that heroes didn't just risk their lives: they sacrificed them. In 'Hell Below', perhaps the first of the great submarine dramas, there is an unnecessary heroic ending in which Robert Montgomery sacrifices his life to complete their mission while leaving the woman he loves to remain with her crippled husband.The story is really about the sort of decisions a commander has to make. Montgomery rebels against his captain, (Walter Huston), who has left a raft with several crewmen, including Montgomery's pal, (and look-alike), Robert Young, (it's the only film they both appeared in and they should have been playing brothers), to die in a hail of German machine gun bullets while the sub dives to avoid being fired upon themselves. Montgomery never forgives Huston. On a later patrol, Montgomery violates orders to maintain silence to start a battle Huston wanted to avoid. Sterling Holloway gets trapped in a section of the ship where poison gas is leaking and Montgomery has to seal him off or expose the rest of the crew to the gas. It's the equivalent of what Huston had to do and he realizes it, even if he doesn't immediately admit it. That's the real dramatic climax of the film, not the comic book suicide mission at the end. The film also features another trend of the times: the borscht belt comic relief provided by a noted comedian, in this case, Jimmy Durante. To the modern viewer this adds nothing to the film. In this case, there's also a glaring mistake in the editing. They apparently felt that the scene where Young and his men get machine gunned to death was a little strong so they sought to leaven it by following it with a clip from an earlier amusement park sequence in which Durante winds up boxing a kangaroo. This is the single most inappropriate and jarring segue in the history of the cinema. I suppose it's not quite right but I really wish someone would put it back where it belongs or delete it all together. One wonders why old Hollywood didn't trust the strength of the stories it was telling to entertain the audience.

Jim Tritten Good footage of World War I-era ships and planes supplement this excellent war drama set in the Adriatic. Walter Huston is excellent as the commanding officer who knows his place and his place has no room for personal feelings. The safety of the ship and the mission must always come first. Robert Montgomery is the Lieutenant who has not yet mastered the role that a leader must play in combat. He makes bad decisions, endangering the submarine and its crew but finally becomes a "real man" after he is court martialed and dismissed from the Navy. Robert Young plays a lieutenant junior grade and Jimmy Durante as a cook. Paralleling the war drama is an equally important wartime love triangle between Montgomery and Madge Evans who plays Huston's daughter and the wife of a tragically injured aviator. Recommended.