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I reckon Bernhard Wicki must've seen this film before he made Morituri as there are quite a few parallels between his WWII film and this Orkney-set WWI thriller, the first collaboration between Powell and Pressburger. There's plenty on offer - German badass Conrad Veidt and the lovely June Duprez in a brief role to name a couple, as this tale of a German U-Boat captain on a mission to sink 16 British ships unfolds. However the whole thing feels a bit stretched and even though it's not a particularly long film, you could probably knock about fifteen minutes off. I'm a bit of a sucker for the kind of fake exteriors that inhabit this and so many other films of its era but they don't disguise the fact that the plot is pretty thin. There are good scenes mind, those with Valerie Hobson are often superbly acted and written, but the final act in unexciting. A good, but often underwhelming effort.
3/5
