Hell and High Water
With Richard Widmark, Bella Darvi, Victor Francen.
US, 1954, 35mm, color, 103 min.
Print source: Criterion
Invited by Darryl Zanuck to direct his first CinemaScope film, Fuller made the unexpected and deliciously perverse choice of a submarine drama set almost entirely within the claustrophobic confines of a U-boat. A brisk Cold War thriller colored by bold action sequences and Fuller’s inventive expansion of the submarine’s chambers, Hell and High Water stars Richard Widmark as an embittered, retired Navy officer hired by a team of international scientists to lead a secret mission pursuing a mysterious Chinese boat suspected of involvement in a sinister atomic plot. Complicating the action is the lead scientist’s comely and talented daughter, who unexpectedly joins the mission, disrupting the submarine’s typically all-male regime. A commercial hit for Fox, Hell and High Water has remained a cult classic, beloved by, among others, Steven Spielberg, who reportedly long kept a print of the film in the trunk of his car.
Part of film series
Screenings from this program
Pickup on South Street
The Crimson Kimono
The Naked Kiss
Underworld U.S.A.
The Baron of Arizona
Merrill's Marauders
House of Bamboo
Fixed Bayonets!
Forty Guns
Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street
A Fuller Life
Run of the Arrow
Street of No Return
The Steel Helmet
The Big Red One
Shock Corridor
Tigrero: A Film That Was Never Made
