The Battle of the River Plate (1956)

Information from IMDb

Plot Summary
Set during the early years of World War II, the War in the Atlantic.
The Royal Navy was fighting a desperate battle to keep the convoy routes open
to keep the British Isles supplied.
One great danger was the surface raiders, huge cruisers called "pocket battleships"
that slipped out of German waters just before war was declared.
The "Bismarck", The "Scharnhorst", The "Gneissau" and The "Graf Spee"
were supplied by tanker & could strike anywhere.
This is the story of how 3 lightly armed cruisers with only 6 and 8 inch guns boldly took
on a powerful pocket battleship armed with 11 inch guns.
They should have been blown out of the water before they could fire a single shot but ...
Written by Steve Crook

Full Cast
John Gregson ... Captain Bell - H.M.S. Exeter
Anthony Quayle ... Commodore Harwood-H.M.S. Ajax
Ian Hunter ... Captain Woodhouse - H.M.S. Ajax
Jack Gwillim ... Captain Parry - H.M.N.Z.S. Achilles
Bernard Lee ... Captain Dove - M.S. Africa Shell
Lionel Murton ... Mike Fowler
Anthony Bushell ... Mr. Millington Drake - British Minister, Montevideo
Peter Illing ... Dr. Guani - Foreign Minister, Uruguay
Michael Goodliffe ... Captain McCall - R.N., British Naval Attache for Buenos Aires
Patrick Macnee ... Lieutenant Commander Medley R.N.
John Chandos ... Dr. Langmann - German Minister, Montevideo
Douglas Wilmer ... M. Desmoulins - French Minister, Montevideo
William Squire ... Ray Martin
Roger Delgado ... Captain Varela - Uruguayan Navy
Andrew Cruickshank ... Captain Stubbs - 'Doric Star'
Christopher Lee ... Manolo
Edward Atienza ... Pop
April Olrich ... Dolores
Peter Finch ... Captain Langsdorff 'Admiral Graf Spee'
María Mercedes ... Madame X (credit only)
David Farrar ... Narrator
Douglas Argent ... Sub. Lieutenant, HMS Ajax (uncredited)
Vincent Ball ... Barnes - HMS Achilles (uncredited)
Ken Barker ... Marine Officer / HMS Ajax (uncredited)
Michael Barnes ... Midshipman, HMS Ajax (uncredited)
Raymond Barrie ... Shirley - HMS Achilles (uncredited)
Terence Bayler ... Stoker - HMS Achilles (uncredited)
Alan Beale ... Capt. Pttinger, prisoner on Graf Spee (uncredited)
Richard Beale ... Captain Pottinger (uncredited)
David Benson ... Marine Officer, HMS Ajax (uncredited)
John Britton ... Navigator, HMS Ajax (uncredited)
Robert Bruce ... Lt. Cmdr. Smith, HMS Exeter (uncredited)
Anna Burden ... Madame Desmoulins, Montevideo (uncredited)
Richard Burrell ... Navigator (HMS Exeter) (uncredited)
Tony Burton ... Young Sailor, Aft-conning, HMS Exeter (uncredited)
David Cameron ... Pilot Officer Lewin, pilot, spotter plane, HMS Ajax (uncredited)
Alan Casley ... Rating, Aft-conning, HMS Exeter (uncredited)
Ronald Clarke ... Prisoner on Graf Spee (uncredited)
Michael Collins ... Chief Yeoman, HMS Ajax (uncredited)
James Copeland ... Chief Yeoman - HMS Achilles (uncredited)
Robert Crewdson ... Minor role (uncredited)
Tita Dane ... (uncredited)
Gron Davies ... Chief Engineer, Trevannionion, prisoner on Graf Spee (uncredited)
Denton De Gray ... Observer Kearney, Spotter plane, HMS Ajax (uncredited)
Maxwell Denne ... Petty Officer - HMS Achilles (uncredited)
Patrick Dove ... Capt., Streonshalh, prisoner on Graf Spee (uncredited)
Peter Dyneley ... Captain, Newton Beach, prisoner on Graf Spee (uncredited)
Eynon Evans ... Chief Engineer, Newton Beach, prisoner on Graf Spee (uncredited)
Jack Faint ... Chief Officer, Ashlea, prisoner on Graf Spee (uncredited)
Peter Fontaine ... Gunnery Officer, HMS Ajax (uncredited)
John Forbes-Robertson ... Lt. McBarnett, HMS Exeter (uncredited)
Frank Forsyth ... Petty Officer, Bridge, HMS Ajax (uncredited)
Barry Foster ... Bill Roper, Capt. Bell's messenger, HMS Exeter (uncredited)
Colin Free ... 2nd Messenger, HMS Ajax (uncredited)
Richard George ... Chief Officer, Trevannion, prisoner on Graf Spee (uncredited)
Keith Grieve ... Sick Bay P.O. - HMS Achilles (uncredited)
Lucia Guillon ... Telephone Girl, Montevideo (uncredited)
Peter Halliday ... Guani's Secretary, Montevideo (uncredited)
Ken Hayward ... Spotting Officer, Gunnery Control, HMS Exeter (uncredited)
Patrick Horgan ... Signalman - HMS Achilles (uncredited)
Helen Horton ... (uncredited)
Mary Jones ... Miss Shaw, Millington Drake's secretary (uncredited)
Kerry Jordan ... O.S. Rogers - HMS Achilles (uncredited)
Patrick Jordan ... Signalman, Aft-conning, HMS Exeter (uncredited)
Marvin Kane ... (uncredited)
Howard Lang ... 'Guns', HMS Exeter (uncredited)
John Le Mesurier ... Rev. George Groves, Padre, HMS Exeter (uncredited)
Frank Lloyd ... Messenger - HMS Achilles (uncredited)
Cyril Luckham ... Lt. Jasper Abbot - HMS Achilles (uncredited)
Kenneth Luckman ... Mess P.O. - HMS Achilles (uncredited)
Ivor Mairants ... Guitarist Accompanying Dolores in Montevideo (uncredited)
Alan Masterson ... Midshipman, HMS Exeter (uncredited)
Jack Mayne ... (uncredited)
Lane Meddick ... P.O. Stacey - HMS Achilles (uncredited)
John Merivale ... Cowburn - HMS Achilles (uncredited)
Kenneth Midwood ... Petty Officer, Gunnery Control, HMS Exeter (uncredited)
Donald Moffat ... Swanston, Look Out, HMS Ajax (uncredited)
George Murcell ... Chief Officer, Newton Beach (uncredited)
Anthony Newley ... Radio Operator, Tairoa, prisoner on Graf Spee (uncredited)
Joseph O'Conner ... Chief Engineer, Doric Star, prisoner on Graf Spee (uncredited)
David Paltenghi ... Customs Officer, Montevideo (uncredited)
Conrad Phillips ... Lt. Washbourne, Gunnery Officer, HMS Achilles (uncredited)
Ambrosine Phillpotts ... Mrs. Millington-Drake, Montevideo (uncredited)
Columba Powell ... Lost Child in Crowd (uncredited)
Edward Powell ... Chief Officer, Huntsman, prisoner on Graf Spree (uncredited)
Irene Prador ... (uncredited)
Peter Prowse ... Look Out, HMS Exeter (uncredited)
Roy Purcell ... Duty Officer Pennefeather, HMS Ajax (uncredited)
Rive Rola ... (uncredited)
Alan Rolfe ... Petty Officer, HMS Exeter (uncredited)
David Rose ... Boy Dorset, HMNZS Achilles (uncredited)
John Schlesinger ... Prisoner on Graf Spee (uncredited)
Peter Scott ... 1st Messenger, HMS Ajax (uncredited)
Peter Smallwood ... Spotting Officer, HMS Ajax (uncredited)
Muriel Smith ... Dolores, Montevideo (uncredited) (singing voice)
Julian Somers ... Quartermaster on Graf Spee (uncredited)
Barry Steele ... Midshipman, HMS Ajax (uncredited)
Graham Stewart ... Signalman, HMS Exeter (uncredited)
Nigel Stock ... Chief Officer, Tairoa, prisoner on Graf Spee (uncredited)
Alan Townsend ... Duty Officer, HMS Ajax (uncredited)
Guy Verney ... Cmdr. Graham, HMS Exeter (uncredited)
Tony Wager ... Look Out, HMS Ajax (uncredited)
Colin Wall ... Boy Bugler, HMS Exeter (uncredited)
John Warren ... Chief Yeoman Signals, HMS Exeter (uncredited)
Patrick Westwood ... Archer, HMS Ajax (uncredited)
George Whiting ... Chief Engineer, Aft-conning, HMS Exeter (uncredited)
Ian Whittaker ... Messenger - Boiler Room, HMS Achilles (uncredited)
David Williams ... Look Out, HMS Exeter (uncredited)
Neil Wilson ... Mess P.O. - HMS Achilles (uncredited)
Brian Worth ... Radio Operator, Doric Star, prisoner on Graf Spee (uncredited)

Produced
Michael Powell .... producer
Emeric Pressburger .... producer
Earl St. John .... executive producer
Sydney Streeter .... associate producer

Writing Credits
Michael Powell (written by) &
Emeric Pressburger (written by)

Original Music
Brian Easdale

Cinematography
Christopher Challis

Trivia
Ships used in the film: HMS Sheffield as HMS Ajax, INS Delhi (HMS Achilles 1933-41, HMNZS Achilles 1941-46) as HMS Achilles, HMS Cumberland as HMS Cumberland, Heavy Cruiser USS Salem as the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee. Light cruiser HMS Jamaica played the played the part of heavy cruiser HMS Exeter.

HMS Battleaxe was also used as a camera ship (off Malta).

The US Navy would not allow any Nazi insignia to be displayed on the USS Salem. Footage of the wartime German flag and other insignia was filmed on British ships.

HMS Birmingham was used as a camera ship.

The Midshipmen's quarters were empty because Captain Langsdorff had promoted all of his Midshipmen to Ensigns in order to make room for his prisoners.

Location filming started on 13 December 1955, the 16th anniversary of the battle. The River Plate Association in Auckland sent a good-luck message to the crew. "Congratulations on choice of day. Hope your shooting will be as successful as ours!"

Attention to detail was particularly important to the producers, so all the naval procedures depicted in the film are completely accurate. The scene where Harwood meets with his captains on board the Ajax, however, was a fictitious one, created in order to explain the situation to the audience.

Most of the sea action was filmed on real ships. The producers were lucky enough to have various ships of the Royal Navy's Mediterranean Fleet at their disposal.

The Admiral Graf Spee was portrayed in the film by the USS Salem, despite the latter having the wrong number of main turrets. Of course, they weren't able to scuttle the real Salem so that was the only real occasion that models were used extensively.

Michael Powell had been a big fan of Noel Coward's In Which We Serve, which acted as inspiration for him.

This was Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's most financially successful film.

Michael Powell later published a novel, "The Last Voyage of the Graf Spee", retelling the story mainly for children.

The film omits the tragic final act of the story. A few days after scuttling his own ship, German Captain Langsdorff committed suicide in a hotel room in Buenos Aires. He was dressed in full uniform and wrapped in the battleflag of his sunken vessel.

River Plate is a mis-translation of the Spanish name for the river, Rio de la Plata. Plata is Spanish for silver and Plato is Spanish for plate. The river is actually called the Silver River.

First feature film of Jack Gwillim.

Niall MacGinnis was offered a role in this project.

First cinema film of Donald Moffat.

John Schlesinger, then an actor, is listed in the credits as Prisoner on the Graf Spee. In actual fact the future director played a German officer, the young Lieutenant who escorts Captain Dove to the ship after the Africa Shell is sunk and introduces him to Langsdorff.

The photo of the Admiral Graf Spee in the captain's cabin was taken at the Fleet Review in Spithead in 1937. The two ships in the background are HMS Hood and HMS Resolution.

According to the book 'The Golden Gong - Fifty years of the Rank Organisation, its films and its stars' by Quentin Falk, this movie was " . . . the last of the Archers true collaborations" with a return to the Rank Company during the mid 1950s after Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger had left after The Red Shoes.

The USS Salem was a WWII-vintage Des Moines class heavy cruiser, armed with nine 8-inch guns. In this movie we can also see the 3-inch AA guns installed to combat Kamikaze attacks.

The film opens in the Indian Ocean on Wednesday November 15th 1939.

Goofs
Anachronisms
By the time of filming, one of the turrets on INS Delhi (HMNZS Achilles) had been removed and HMS Cumberland was a trials ship without any guns.

Continuity
After HMS Cumberland had joined Ajax and Achilles replacing Exeter, the three ships portrayed in following scenes were still the same three initial cruisers, with HMS Jamaica playing a role of HMS Exeter.

The Graf Spee goes down exactly as the sun sets, and then the British warships steam away with the sun still above the horizon.

As HMS Exeter prepares for battle the personnel on the bridge are looking to the port bow; however, when the ship is shown immediately afterwards, all of the weapons are pointing over the starboard bow.

Throughout the film Commodore Harwood wears the uniform of a Rear Admiral. The rank he does not attain until he gets promoted near the end of the film.

On the morning of December 13th as the British await the Graf Spee, the sun rises over the South American shoreline. Unfortunately the sun rises in the East.

When the crew of the Ajax cheers the Achilles in long shot, the crew (including both bridges) are wearing dark blue naval uniforms, but when it switches to close ups of both bridges, they are in tropical white uniforms.

When the British first spot the Graf Spee through binoculars, a prominent cloud of smoke is billowing from the battleship's funnel. But the full frame shot of the ship shows no smoke at all.

When the petty officer runs forward on Exeter after she is hit in the bow, he reacts to the explosion of another shell before the hit occurs. He then completely disappears between frames and a repair party suddenly appears. It can also be seen that the ship is not moving through the water during these scenes.

Crew or equipment visible
When Graf Spee is leaving Montevideo, there are some cars visible on her deck.

Factual errors
When Captain Dove is first brought aboard the Graf Spee, the anti-aircraft gunners are wearing US-pattern steel helmets, not the German "coal-scuttle" design. This is noticeable in various other scenes as well, and is due to the fact that the Graf Spee is being played by the USS Salem.

A symbolic scene, when a crane lowers a lifeboat with Captain Dove into an aircraft hangar of "Admiral Graf Spee", and the roof closes over it, could not happen, because such hangars were typical for US ships only, and "Graf Spee" had no aircraft hangar.

Memorable Quotes

Filming Locations
Atlantic Ocean
Cromarty Firth, Invergordon, Highland, Scotland, UK (re-fuelling scene)
Malta (Mgarr, Gozo)
Malta (Grand Harbour)
Harbour, Montevideo, Uruguay (harbour scenes - showing crowds)
Malta (out at sea)
Pinewood Studios, Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, England, UK (studio)
Portsmouth, Hampshire, England, UK (on board the "Argonaut")

Watch this Clip

[extendedmedia]

The Battle of the River Plate is a 1956 British war film by director-writer team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger,
starring John Gregson, Anthony Quayle and Peter Finch.
In the United States the film was retitled Pursuit of the Graf Spee.

The film portrays the Battle of the River Plate, a naval battle of 1939,
between a Royal Navy force of three cruisers and the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee.
Unlike many British war movies of its time,
The Battle of the River Plate treats the German sailors as honourable opponents
rather than as cardboard cut-out "Huns" and Nazis.
This was a recurrent theme in Powell and Pressburger's films,
such as The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp.

User Review

Quote

A masterful depiction of the first major naval battle of the Second World War.
7 June 2004 | by grafspee (Australia)

I often wonder why this film was re-named The Battle of the River Plate when the actual action took place 150 miles to the east in the South Atlantic. Nevertheless it is a great production brought all the closer to reality by the use of two of the original Allied cruisers which were still in commission at the time of filming. The big problem was the choice of a warship to fill the role of the pocket battleship Graf Spee which had already been scuttled and that of her two sister ships which were also destroyed before the end of the war. The choice of the heavy cruiser USS Salem while not perfect was probably the best the producers could come up with despite it's extra tier of forward and rear main guns and the familiar U.S. Navy number 139 on it's bough. The storyline of the film is held together through the eyes of Captain Dove played by Bernard Lee who is taken aboard the Graf Spee after his merchant ship Africa Shell becomes one of her victims. Loosely held as a prisoner Dove is given an insight into the Graf Spee's tactics as a surface raider and that she is in fact masquerading as an American warship with false gun turrets and a bough number, solving the producers dilemma of explaining the different physical characteristics of each warship. The actual battle while well done does show a few inconsistencies in that the near miss salvos are more like large splashes and at times the Graf Spee looks motionless while being bombarded by allied shells. This is more than made up by the fine acting of the combatants, with Anthony Quale giving a best of British tradition role as task force leader Commodore Henry Harwood along with John Gregson as Captain Bell of HMS Exeter and Jack Gwillim as Captain Parry of the New Zealand cruiser Achilles. Peter Finch is perfect in the role of the chivalrous and compassionate German commander of the Graf Spee Hans Langsdorff who in real life displayed these rare qualities and was immensely respected by those on both sides of the conflict. When the Graf Spee puts into Montevideo harbour in neutral Uruguay to effect repairs a great diplomatic battle ensues over her sanctuary and the story switches to a tense minute by minute dockside radio coverage by American reporter Mike Fowler played in true journalistic style by Lionel Murton. Meanwhile two of the three British Cruisers supported by a newly arrived warship Cumberland maintain a vigil out to sea while their embassy engages in it's own brand of propaganda to deceive the Germans into believing they are up against a vastly superior British naval force. Langsdorff falls for the ruse and after seeing his men to safety scuttles his mighty warship precisely at sunset a few miles out of Montevideo in the mouth of the River Plate. With the expectations that another and greater naval action was forthcoming this fateful decision gives the end of the film somewhat of an anti-climax but it was the factual truth and a necessary conclusion to maintain it's credibility. To add a final footnote, there is presently underway a large salvage operation to raise as much of the Graf Spee as possible and eventually put it on display in a museum in Montevideo.