Below the Surface (1920) User Reviews

Entertaining Potboiler

[boblipton · 6/10 · 23 September 2005]

This expertly rendered potboiler stars Hobart Bosworth as a great diver who is approached by some con artists. They want him to front for a fake company recovering gold from wrecks. He refuses and they put pressure on him by vamping his son.

Everyone plays their parts well and this silent movie from 1920 is beautifully acted -- particularly well underplayed by Bosworth and con man George Webb -- and well shot. The outdoor scenes are shot on location, including the diving platforms and that adds a great deal to movies like this: a touch of realism that later, slicker Hollywood movies would lose.

Watch out for Gladys George, who spent the late thirties playing oversexed mature women (best in THE MALTESE FALCON) as a young, innocent ingénue.

One for Lloyd Hughes fans!

[JohnHowardReid · 7/10 · 16 December 2014]

An odd film in that all the characters except that played by Lloyd Hughes and Gladys George (in a small role) are unsympathetic. Hobart Bosworth is very convincing as the self-righteous "hero", while Grace Darmond and George Webb are equally well cast as the opportunistic villains. Hughes is surprisingly agreeable as the young hero who falls for the villainess (and who will blame him?) Alas, despite its large budget, the movie is directed in a rather slow and disappointingly flat style by Irvin Willat, renowned far and wide as a specialist in made-on-location, big budget epics. This entry obviously cost the studio a small fortune in effects and manpower too, but nevertheless, Willat seems to be operating below his usual level of competence here. True, there are some exciting underwater scenes, but too much footage is underpinned by the unsympathetic Bosworth character. On many occasions, it seems that the character's overweening self- righteousness is about to be questioned, but this actually never happens, let alone is it ever brought to account. Instead the priggish Bosworth character never gets his comeuppance and is treated as a hero from first to last! Available on a fair Grapevine DVD.

Another Ince Submarine Drama

[briantaves · 16 October 2011]

BELOW THE SURFACE (1920) followed up on the success of producer Thomas Ince's BEHIND THE DOOR, as another undersea "special," as I outline in my Ince biography. Like the previous film, the new one again starred Hobart Bosworth, and was directed by Irvin J. Willat; Luther Reed wrote the script. The conflict is set out in the opening frames. Dorcas Island is a conservative village of respectable people, where breakfast is at sunup and dinner twelve hours later at six p.m. The mother maintains the balance between father Martin (Hobart Bosworth) and son Paul (Lloyd Hughes). Hughes is ideally cast, his thin physique contrasting with Bosworth, playing a role only slightly more sophisticated than those of Charles Ray. However, corruption from the city, Boston, will sunder this idyll.

BELOW THE SURFACE opens and closes with exciting scenes of diving, but in between becomes mired in melodrama. Maine diver Martin Flint (Hobart Bosworth) is the only man who, three miles offshore, can descend to 55 fathoms deep to attach a line leading to the recovery of a Navy submarine, saving 37 men from asphyxiation in a "shell of death." Reading of the incident in Boston is James Arnold, who unlike the good citizens or Dorcas Island lives just within the law, connects the feat with an 1879 wreck. Arnold wants to use Flint's reputation as bait to lure investors in creating a dummy corporation to dive for the wealth in the on the ocean bottom.

Martin sees the difference between risking his life in a dive to save lives, and for profit, but his son, Paul (Lloyd Hughes) is lured into the project by Arnold's "sister" Edna, with whom Paul falls in love. Whereas Paul's playfulness with a good-hearted local girl, Alice (Gladys George), had been symbolized by a kitten's antics, Edna "vamps" the innocent lad, as noted by an intertitle: "The age old bait--a pretty and unscrupulous woman." Even when Martin reveals Edna's past and her marriage to Arnold, she claims that meeting Paul has reformed her, and the couple marry. She claims the money from the wreck is still needed to pay off Arnold, so the day of their wedding Paul dives to the wreck. Observed by Martin, Paul brings up gold coins the morning of his wedding and barely survives. When he returns home, he finds Edna has left, their marriage certificate torn.

He collapses with brain fever, calling for her, and Martin determines to bring her back to save his son, even knowing the sort of person she is. She is found in a Boston nightclub, but on the return ferry voyage with Martin, Arnold has also stowed away. When a derelict sinks the ferry in the fog, the illicit couple are drowned together. Paul is determined to bring Edna's body out of its water grave to the surface, and dives to the wreck, where he glimpses the two corpses dead together through the cabin window. His line becomes fouled, and Martin must dive to save his son, although he fears he may have lost his mind. Paul is hoisted back to the surface, and he recovers. "When the past is but a dim dream," in the words of an intertitle, he comes to appreciate the love of Alice. BELOW THE SURFACE cost $132,045 to produce, and grossed $354,362.