It is a motion picture about war made in wartime, during a period of history when no one spoke about “anti”-war films. It reflected quite accurately the sentiments of the three classes which made up British society, the working, middle and upper class, in the simplified way in which all people then looked at war. Although it included the first defeat in Europe, with the evacuation of mostly British forces at Dunkirk, and “Hitler’s Entry into Paris”, it was still a time when almost everybody, in spite of the desert war, the air raids and the Battle of Britain still thought that the ultimate horrors of war were the Flanders fields trench battles of the First World War (…). The mass destruction of cities by aerial bombardment, the horrors of the Japanese theatre of war, culminating in the ghastly mind-defeating agonies of the concentration camps, were all aspects of war totally unthought of in 1942, where the war at sea, revolving around the sinking of vital supply ships by U-boats (as in the First War) again reinforced subconscious ideas that this second Second War was bound to be similar to the first. As a result, it was quite natural that Hitler could be referred to in the film in the same semi-friendly way as “Kaiser Bill” was in the other war. (…) The film begins in Grierson documentary form with a montage of scenes showing the building of the destroyer, with close-ups of workers’ faces, of rivets being driven into steel plates, sections of the ship being swung into place, the keel taking shape, culminating in the champagne bottle breaking on the bow and the ship slidding into the water. (…) While there is little in this prelude which had not been seen before in British documentary films, it is an exciting introduction to the style and sensitivity of a new director, not Noël Coward, but David Lean, who, being fairly unknown to critics and public at the time this film was shown, was scarcely mentioned in any reviews. The feeling for movement and lyricism within the frame of each shot and the skilful editing and cross-cutting was to become a characteristic in many of Lean’s films to follow. The sea with its spray and the sky with its clouds is a beautiful example of black-and-white photography and feeling for the elements.

Gerard Pratley, The Cinema of David Lean, Barnes & Co./The Tantivy Press, New Jersey-London, 1974