Hell and High Water (1954)

Hell and High Water (Samuel Fuller, 1954) Sam Fuller was a tabloid journalist before he became a film-maker, and when he switched careers—after stints writing pulp novels and screenplays—he had his first big hit with a topical Korean War picture, The Steel Helmet. From then on, Fuller kept his eyes on the headlines for his subject matter in order to attract audiences in such of something new. It kept his already edgy film-making style on the bleeding edge of topical audience-grabbers.

So, you can hardly blame him when he starts his atomic-age spy adventure, Hell and High Water, with a literal bang—an atomic bomb explosion, created with a high-octane initial explosion inter-cut with government approved nuclear footage (carefully color-corrected, evidently, as the actual colors  might reveal atomic secrets via the boiling colors inside the conflagration.

That bomb blast is preceded by opening titles: 

In the summer of 1953, it was announced that an atomic bomb of foreign origin had been exploded somewhere outside of the United States. Shortly thereafter it was indicated that this atomic reaction, according to scientific reports, originated in a remote area in North Pacific waters, somewhere between the northern tip of the Japanese Islands and the Arctic Circle. This is the story of that explosion.

A French atomic scientist, Prof. Montel (Victor Francen) on his way to a conference goes missing at Orly Airport; the headlines around the world assume that he has defected behind the Iron Curtain. But one man is about to find out differently. 

Retired submarine commander Adam Jones (Richard Widmark) is traveling anonymously in Tokyo.  A former sub-mate recognizes him, but he brushes him off. $5,000 will do that. He's been wired the money as down payment for a job in Japan; what it entails he has no idea, but he's traveled there to find out. Instructions take him to a hidden base, where an eclectic group of officials and atomic scientists—including the missing Frenchman—have summoned Jones for a particular mission.

They've taken possession of a scuttled Japanese submarine to do some investigating of a remote island in the Bering sea above the Arctic Circle, where a Chinese freighter has been making frequent deliveries, and where a recent surveillance plane has been shot down. The pilot was a friend of Jones' so he's already hooked to take on the mission, plus, he'll get an additional $45 grand  if he pulls it off, but he has two demands—he wants his pick of his old crew to get the submarine into shape...and he wants it armed.

The first one he gets, but the committee, in a hurry to get going because that targeted freighter has once again sailed, doesn't give Jones the time to test the torpedo tubes...or, for that matter, give the sub an extended dive test. Well, it wouldn't be a secret mission without some form of handicap. But, it doesn't stop the handicaps from increasing by taking on Marcel as an observer, and he brings along his assistant, Professor Denise Gerard (Bella Darvi*), whose presence is perpetually disruptive—initially because the crew-members of Jones' old command see her as a sign of bad luck for an all-male crew, but eventually, because she inspires a lot of unwanted attention, causing fist-fights and a general lack of focus.

The problem is solved by the Captain, by cracking down on his crew and placing her off-limits—to everyone, but himself, of course. Rank evidently has its privileges.

Fuller did his research aboard an active submarine, and he was able to use the relatively new Cinemascope widescreen process to advantage aboard the cramped quarters of the submarine sets, showing that it could be used for more than religious epics. One of the benefits of that research is in the using of red interior lights in a submarine—which were used to keep light from being emitted from a raised periscope and to allow crewmen's eyes on watch to adjust to the dark. It creates an eerie glow that Fuller uses to great advantage during one of the improbable love scenes between Jones and Gerard.

Fuller stages some nifty little underwater sequences as the sub plays cat-and-mouse games with a Chinese submarine and the freighter only to find that the island that it's going to is a feint for a second island, where there is a marked difference in detectable radioactivity and a secret that reveals a plot that would be re-run in the Cold War James Bond films of the '60's. 

This wasn't one of Fuller's favorite assignments or results, which he dismissed as "a sea picture where we never went to sea" (although Fuller is a clever magician with stock footage that you never know that, despite the set-bound nature of many of the set-pieces)—but it is fondly remembered—recycled footage was used in the "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" TV series and Steven Spielberg used it as research for 1941, and proudly showed Fuller a print of it in the trunk of his car when Fuller filmed a cameo for that film (as Fuller chortled in his autobiography).

Still, it is a diverting adventure yarn, with some surprises and shocks along the way, even if it's muted Fuller (perhaps because the original writer, Jesse Lasky, Jr. was allowed a re-write of Fuller's re-write of his script).  It is rare that you could call a film by Sam Fuller "a programmer" but Hell and High Water is as close as the man would come in his career.

* Fuller took on the assignment out of loyalty to producer Darryl F. Zanuck, who stood by the director after FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had strong, and censorious, objections to Fuller's Pickup on South Street. But, along with taking on the job, Fuller had to put up with some of Zanuck's casting suggestions—Bella Darvi being one of them. Darvi was discovered by Zanuck's wife Virginia—her stage name is a combination of the first syllable of the Mr. and Mrs. Zanuck's first names—who insisted she move into the Zanuck home after her divorce from her husband. Soon after, she became Darryl Zanuck's mistress. Widmark protested Davi's casting, but was overruled. Fuller did have a problem with Darvi's heavily accented English, so he used Zanuck's tric of calling in a favor, employing his frequent co-star Gene Evans to function as her dialogue coach.