RULERS OF THE SEA

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 39, 21 March 1940, Page 20

RULERS OF THE SEA

(Paramount) The title of this film led me to expect another of those cavalcades of Man’s achievement, all full of noble sentiment but little dramatic substance, with which Hollywood periodically delights to dumbfound us. "Rulers of the

Sea," I feared, would take us all the way from coracles to pocket battleships, and possibly finish with a close-up of Mr. Churchill. It was a relief, then, to find that this show concentrates on but one aspect and one epoch of the story of navigation-the conquest of steam over sail. By so doing it is able to keep the human interest very much alive and spin a good yarn about the efforts of two men last century to prove that a paddle-wheel was faster and safer than wind-filled canvas when it came to crossing the Atlantic. Producer-Director Frank Lloyd, whose forte is the sea, is in his element for

most of the picture, with storms fierce enough to turn your stomach if you’re a landlubber, trouble aloft, trouble under hatches, trouble on the waterfront (yes, even in those days), and trouble all the way from England to America. On dry land, Mr. Lloyd is not quite so happy in his story-telling; but fortunately Will Fyffe is there to take up most of the slack in the interest with probably the juiciest bit of character acting since the same Will Fyffe’s performance in " Owd Bob." Fyffe is the elderly little engineer, Shaw-cantankerous, lovable and very braw Scots-who is ready to fight the whole world to prove that the Atlantic can be crossed by steam. His staunch ally in the fight is young David Gillespie (Douglas Fairbanks junr.). With him one moment, against him the next; but finally cheering him wholeheartedly along, is Shaw’s daughter, Mary (Margaret Lockwood); whose interest in steam engines is occasioned mainly by the young engineer who assists her father. There is intelligence in the acting of all three stars. The film, it may be said, takes a little too long to get up steam; but once the big test begins, and the "old stéam kettle," the Dog Star, is paddling furiously along in a race with a sailing vessel, there is no lack of incident. The success of the venture is threatened by storms, coal shortage, mutiny, and an accident which scalds old Shaw to death; but Frank Lloyd’s restraint. is admirable. Having pioneered the first steamship crossing of the Atlantic, he leaves it at that: almost any other Hollywood director would have given us a final shot of the young lovers’ grandchildren doing it in style on the Queen Mary. A film well worth seeing.