Sea Fury

A tiny handful of people have had the adventurous life Victor McLaglen had. To give you an idea, his rich and rollicking autobiography was published near the *beginning* of his acting career, a career that would later give him a Best Actor Oscar and a Best Supporting Actor nomination almost two decades after *that*. Before becoming an actor, he managed to fight in both the Boer War and World War I, fight (in a different sense) freshly-crowned heavyweight champion Jack Johnson, play vaudeville, mine for gold, and serve as Provost Marshall for the city of Baghdad! McLaglen was neither a grandly handsome actor nor a great one (though he gave a few great performances, most notably the one that won him the Oscar, in John Ford's brilliant 1935 "The Informer.") He was big and broad, both in stature and in performance, and his most famous roles ("The Informer," "The Quiet Man," "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon," etc.) made use of both aspects. He lived to be 72, and every one of those years showed up on his face. His later films rarely gave him much of interest to do, and he seemed tired and passive in some of them.

Therefore, his very last film, "Sea Fury," came as a surprise to me. In this British film, made only a few months before McLaglen's death, he is actually at one corner of a love triangle and displays much of the roughneck quality that infused so much of his early work. In this British film, McLaglen's first in his native country since silent days, he plays a tugboat captain who is tempted by a young woman's mercenary father into falling in love with her. The father knows that such a husband for his daughter would not live long and would make her wealthy at his death (at least by the standards of her Spanish village). The captain knows he should not be so foolish as to hope for the love of a girl fifty years his junior, yet hearts and minds do not always think alike, and the captain's heart overrules his wisdom.

Lucianna Paluzzi, who would later make a bit of a splash as the bad Bond girl opposite Sean Connery in "Thunderball," is here a deliciously innocent yet wildly tempting young girl, and most of her scenes leave no doubt that any man with a heterosexual heartbeat would have trouble not falling for her. One who does is a sailor played by Stanley Baker, one of Britain's better leading men of the period, albeit one who did not rise to quite the worldwide fame of his contemporaries like Richard Burton and Richard Harris. Baker's sailor signs on as a seaman aboard McLaglen's tug, and trouble of course arises when he and the girl fall hard for each other.

What seems bound to become a rather typical love-triangle movie turns out not to be, due in part to the very age difference between McLaglen and the girl, something that (unlike in many Hollywood films) is not ignored but actually confronted in the drama. Also, the film is a wonderful slice of a life that is at once quite real and quite unfamiliar to most of us. The Spanish village where the sailors live while waiting on news of wrecks they can sail out to salvage, and life aboard the tugboats, are both given a most believable and interesting depiction. They're not mere locations but living, breathing unique situations that seem rooted in reality.

The final portion of the film is a terrifically exciting sequence aboard a wrecked ship in which the actors seem to be in almost as much danger as the characters they portray. The whole movie is much more exciting and affecting than I ever expected it to be, and it is a touching and quite fitting farewell to Victor McLaglen, one of the most remarkable figures in film history.

The final sequence of this film, of saving a ship in distress with very dangerous high explosive cargo, is very reminiscent of Powell-Pressburger's "A Matter of Life and Death" ten years earlier, where the final sequence was the dismantling of a booby-trap. It's the same supreme tension here, while here many lives are depending on getting the explosive cargo out of the ship, which is a very risky operation demanding very hard work under full storm. I always liked Stanley Baker's films, he always made them better than they really were, although he certainly was no dashing good-looking film star crushing any hearts but rather a grim silent tough die-hard with nothing attractive about him. Victor McLaglen gives a final bow here and makes a full brilliant show of it more often with bottles than without. Among the others you notice Robert Shaw offering some rivalry, Rupert Davies and a very young Barry Foster with no red hair, since this is in black-and-white. It's a magnificent adventure film with authentic north Spanish sceneries and exquisite guitar music all the way, but the best scene is when Victor McLaglen can't really hold back when his intended bride is changing clothes for something risqué. Especially in that scene McLaglen demonstrates the full scope of his uniquely personal art of acting.

Victor McLaglen's last feature film found him trying to romance Luciana Paluzzi. McLaglen's a salvage tug captain and he's going through an end life crisis romancing young Luciana Paluzzi who's young enough to be his granddaughter.

Seems that her father Roger Delgado, an innkeeper in a North Spain sea village, would like to get his daughter fixed up with a comfortable situation for both of them. He encourages her flirtations with McLaglen. But she's got eyes for Stanley Baker who's a member of McLaglen's crew.

What saves this film is the action sequences on the high seas, especially Stanley Baker risking life and limb to dump a steel drum of lethal sodium during a storm, on board a listing freighter. Reason enough to see this film. There's also a bit of rivalry between Baker and another member of McLaglen's crew, Robert Shaw.

Shaw and Baker both went on to solid careers as tough leading men. Baker never got quite the acclaim that Shaw did internationally, but he was good box office in Great Britain.

Roger Delgado was best known in the British TV series Doctor Who for originating the role of the Doctor's number one nemesis, the Master. Death in an automobile crash in 1973 cut short a very good career.

Watch it for the action sequences.

Firstly can I make the point that although this site shows Baker as top billed it is Mclaglen who was top billed and the name above the title.Mclaglen was an actor who was rarely capable of giving a restrained performance.He needed someone of the calibre of John Ford in getting him to be more restrained.Here he is rather odd because he lusts after a woman young enough to be his granddaughter.Difficult to know whether the director was serious about suggesting this romance.Anyway all the action is reserved for the climax which involves Stanley Baker.IThe end of a long career for Victor.

Victor McLaglen, the captain of a tug boat service forms a misplaced affection for Luciana Paluzzi, her father (Delgado) happy to oblige for a significant dowry and ongoing prestige. Paluzzi, of course, at least thirty-something years McLaglen's junior, isn't so willing to be matrimonially arranged and finds mutual attraction with the newly hired mate, Stanley Baker. The ensuing tension creates friction between those loyal to the embattled skipper, and others swayed by Baker's courage and the prospect of a changing in the guard.

McLaglen's final film role is a great individual swansong, but he's better than the matinee grade material. Baker's loner character will draw parallels with that of "Hell Drivers" (another Endfield-Kruse collaboration), as the tough, uncompromising rogue, his professional and disciplined approach initially welcomed by McLaglen starts to wane when it becomes clear that Paluzzi is forming affections for the new first mate. The inevitable transition is made more dramatic by those loyal to the old captain (Shaw, being the most impacted by Baker's sudden arrival and elevation up the pecking order), opposing the vanguard.

The action sequences are competent, but Paluzzi's characterisation (whilst undeniably attractive) lacks the depth which perhaps a Sophia Loren or Pier Angeli would have found in the role. I'm a fan of Paluzzi although I just didn't think this was a role in which her acting talents were utilised beyond being an object of desire and wedge for the ensuing conflict between the male leads.

Quality British supporting cast (aforementioned Shaw and Delgado joined by DeWolff, Aslan and even Barry Foster in a minor role) are mostly spectators to the tepid love triangle and Endfield's direction is not as taut or narratively fluent as in "Hell Drivers" (the similarities with which are too obvious to deny and is possibly where "Sea Fury" suffers as a comparison). But for Baker's charisma and McLaglen's jealous-turn invoking equal amounts of scorn and sympathy accordingly, this would be a largely forgettable experience. A solid climax briefly elevates the picture, but not sufficiently to redeem the otherwise soap-operatic storyline from mediocre status. Fair, but far from memorable.