Run Silent Run Deep
With Clark Gable, Burt Lancaster, Jack Warden.
US, 1958, 35mm, black & white, 93 min.
Lancaster cast himself as a frustrated, steely-edged naval officer in Robert Wise's gripping WWII combat film and study of tenacious masculinity set almost entirely upon a US submarine on a perilous mission deep in enemy waters. Sharing top-billing is Clark Gable as a veteran submarine captain driven by an Ahab-obsession to seek revenge on the same Japanese freighter that destroyed his submarine and almost scuttled his career, back at sea for a last stand whose dangerous gambit only second-in-command Lancaster fully understands. While ultimately an affirmation of military hierarchy and American naval puissance Run Silent Run Deep soberly resists an easy victory narrative by keeping palpable the sense that the submarine's mission is always just about to go terribly wrong.