The Enemy Below (1957)

Robert Mitchum: Capt. Murrell

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Quotes 

• [last lines] 

  Von Stolberg : I should have died many times, Captain, but I continue to survive somehow. This time it was your fault.

  Captain Murrell : I didn't know. Next time I won't throw you the rope.

  Von Stolberg : I think you will.

• Doctor : Well, in time we'll all get back to our own stuff again. The war will get swallowed up, and seem like it never happened.

  Captain Murrell : Yes, but it won't be the same as it was. We won't have that feeling of permanency that we had before. We've learned a hard truth.

  Doctor : How do you mean?

  Captain Murrell : That there's no end to misery and destruction. You cut the head off a snake, and it grows another one. You cut that one off, and you find another. You can't kill it, because it's something within ourselves. You can call it the enemy if you want to, but it's part of us; we're all men.

• Captain Murrell : I have no idea what he is, what he thinks. I don't want to know the man I'm... trying to destroy.

• Doctor : Remember our talk on the bridge - the weighty one, death and destruction? You might be interested to know that I've seen another reason for hope. Found it in a funny place, too... in the middle of an ocean, right in the middle of a war.

  Captain Murrell : You had to come a long way to find it, though, didn't you, Doc?

  Doctor : It was worth the trip.

  Captain Murrell : Maybe.

• Doctor : I guess you're finding the sun kind of hard to take, after the North Atlantic.

  Captain Murrell : Oh, it doesn't matter. It's always either too cold or too hot, wherever there's a war on.

• Doctor : What was your work, Captain?

  Captain Murrell : This, the sea.

  Doctor : You mean you were a sailor?

  Captain Murrell : I was third officer on a freighter out of Boston to Liverpool, Le Havre, and back again.

  Doctor : Some of our crew will be glad to know that. Our saltiest boys were complaining mightily about getting a civilian skipper. A 'feather merchant', I think they called it.

  Captain Murrell : Well, I am a feather merchant.

  Doctor : Well, yes, but not exactly.

  Captain Murrell : No, exactly. On the freighter, we were men against the sea; here, we're men against men. Like every other civilian in the war, I had to learn a new way of thinking.

  Doctor : Why did you change over to the Navy?

  Captain Murrell : Well, the freighter I was on was cut in half by a torpedo. Thought I'd like to be on the shooting end for a change.