I take the title to be the kind of pun that Richard Matthieson was fond of using. In one sense, the enemy is of course the submarine commanded by the clever Curt Jurgens. In another sense, the enemy is more obliquely identified in a "philosophical" conversation that Robert Mitchum, commander of a Buckley-class destroyer escort, has with the ship's doctor. Mitchum goes on for several minutes about how men seem to have an unconquerable evil part of them, so that "if you cut off the head of a snake it just grows another one." Let's say that Enemy Number One is the submarine that lies beneath the surface of the sea. Enemy Number Two is the reptilian brain that lies beneath the cerebral cortex.
Mitchum plays his role straight: competent and all business. Jurgens on the other hand has been exhausted by the war and disillusioned by the political ideology he and his crew are risking their lives for. He drinks too much brandy at one point and maunders on about how, during the first war, it was all a kind of game in which the KaEl would say, "Torpedos -- loss," and sometimes they'd go and sometimes not. The American crew are all clean cut and good humored. The Germans are sloppily dressed and sweaty. Jurgens is clever enough to elude the DE but betrays himself by continually coming back to the same course, the one which leads straight to home, and Mitchum outwits him.
Good points? I can't offhand think of a film about the US Navy that has such realistic seagoing atmosphere. The color photography is superb. The wind blows on weather decks and makes everyone's hair and clothing flap, as it does on a ship at high speed. The twists and turns of the game being played by the two skippers generates a good deal of suspense.
Weaknesses. All the German sailors are ordinary human beings except the one Nazi aboard, whom Jurgens finds disgusting. And because of his background as a folk singer it's difficult to forget the ethnicity that Theodore Bikel brings to his role as executive officer. And we see a lot of depth charge attacks from the submariners' point of view, with bolts springing loose, a panicky crewman, chronometer crystals cracking, water squirting forth, all of which are already familiar from earlier movies, including "Destination Tokyo."
Then a scene that I've never figured out. Mitchum has been charging in to drop a few depth charges on a regular basis, then turning away after the attack. After one such incident, Jurgens says to Bikel, "Now I'll tell you something. Each time he comes in to attack he turns away. He doesn't always turn the same way, but twice he did." This allows the sub to prepare to launch torpedoes if the DE turns the same way again. What does that all mean? If you only have two ways to turn after an attack, right or left, how can you not turn the same way once in a while? If you turn the other way every time you finish an attack, you make yourself predictable and therefore vulnerable. The explanation makes no sense, but I suppose is offered just as an excuse for permitting the fish, or "eels" as the Germans called them, to be launched.
After the torpedoes wound the DE mortally, Jurgens surfaces to finish the ship off with his guns. Mitchum, who has planned for this, says, "He's coming up. That's the first foolish thing he's done. It makes us even." I don't get that either. It was routine for U-boats to sink defenseless ships with deck guns in order to conserve their torpedoes. It happened every day (and night).
The last thing I consider a weakness is the final scene. True, both the DE and the U-boat are destroyed, but the outcome is hardly a tie. The image of the American ship perched atop the smashed submarine is unforgettable and too powerful to represent an even loss. And on top of that, so to speak, the movie ends with the two skippers face to face aboard the American destroyer that has rescued them. It's a cliché of antiwar movies that have humanized the enemy, as this one has done. We respect one another and we're all alike under the skin and in war there are no winners -- except that we win. The Americans will be free to go on fighting; the Germans are all prisoners of war, those that have survived. "Torpedo Bay" has an Italian submarine and a British destroyer pitted against one another. The crews meet on shore and develop a mutual respect. In the end, it is only with the greatest reluctance that the submarine blows up the destroyer, saluting the ship as it sinks. It's an Italian movie. In "Zulu," the bravery and stamina and self sacrifice of the African warriors leave the British soldiers in awe, and it is only out of desperation that the Tommies mow them down like wheat. It's a British movie. In "Die Brucke," a handful of German schoolkids are put into uniform and told mistakenly to hold a bridge against an attack by an enormous force of well-armed Americans who are by no means brutal savages. The kids suffer terrible losses and in the end the bridge ironically is blown by German troops, although the Americans have been driven off and the bridge held. It's a German movie. "The Bridge on the River Kwai" has Japanese troops that are as human and sympathetic as the British prisoners. But the bridge is destroyed. It's a British movie. I don't need to go on about this. "The Enemy Below," like the others, has a latent feel-good quality for an American audience. How would they have felt if the two opposing crews had been sailing away on another German sub?
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