Devil and the Deep

Bankhead made a handful of silent films before she became the rage of the London stage in the late 20s. Back in Hollywood, she made 7 films in 1931 and 1932. The Devil and the Deep was the penultimate one. She was not a success. It would be more than a decade before she would "face the cameras" again in 1944's brilliant Lifeboat for Alfred HItchcock.

The few of these early talkies I've seen have been fascinating because Bankhead was a STAR, and no one was quite like her. She had the allure of Garbo or Dietrich, but she was closer to Davis or Crawford or Constance Bennett in her temperament. In Faithless, Tarnished Lady, The Cheat, and Devil and the Deep she plays basically the same character: the woman who goes wrong but is saved in the end. Bankhead suffered in her 30s films from lousy directors. In Devil and the Deep, Marion Gering mis-directs by letting Charles Laughton ham it up as the husband, while Gary Cooper as the lover is boring. Bankhead holds center stage and is really very good in this VERY strange film.

It's a submarine movie set apparently in Algiers or some such place. She is the commander's bored wife. He's nuts. After her fling with Cary Grant (yes it's quite the cast), Laughton has him transferred. Cooper's fate is worse since they're all aboard the sub when all hell breaks loose.

Bankhead looks great in stylish clothing and slinks about the house and the club , the streets (amid whirling dervishes), and on the sub. Laughton is menacing and his final scene is memorable. But they're not a very believable couple. Cooper is oddly boring and is given awful lines to say. Grant, in a small part, is, well, Cary Grant. Paul Porcasi is the shop keeper, Henry Kolker and Juliette Compton are the catty club denizens. One problem is that the film is underlit so it's hard to see a lot of detail. Amusing scenes with Cooper and Bankhead staring up at the stars, buying cheap perfume, and buying a pool cue.

With a better director and better writers, this could have been a blockbuster. But it's neat to see Bankhead in her prime, before she became a campy professional star.

Devil and the Deep (1932)

*** (out of 4)

Diana Sturm (Tallulah Bankhead) is married to submarine Cmdr. Charles Sturm (Charles Laughton) and everyone sees her as a bad person. The truth of the matter is that Charles is extremely abusive to her and will stop at nothing to destroy any man's life he feels she is attracted to. One night while running away from the abuse, Diana meets Lt. Sempter (Gary Cooper) and the two have a relationship, which soon leads to disaster.

DEVIL AND THE DEEP isn't a very well-known movie and I must admit that I'm quite shocked about that. I had never really heard of the film until recently and it's rather amazing because you've got not only Bankhead, Laughton and Cooper but you've also got a young Cary Grant in a nice early role. Four legendary stars from Hollywood's Golden Age and you mention the title to most film buffs and they won't be familiar with it.

Whatever the reason people don't know the film, it's really too bad because it's actually pretty good. The greatest thing about the film is the ending, which I won't spoil but it takes place on the submarine and there's no question that it's quite tense and rather claustrophobic. Director Marion Gering really does a nice job with this entire sequence and while some of the special effects shots aren't the greatest, the overall impact of the scene is very good. The film does get off to a rather slow start but it quickly picks up.

The performances are certainly the main reason to watch the picture with Bankhead delivering a fine one. She's very good in the role of the abusive wife and I really enjoyed her performance when she had to show the fear she feels for her husband. I thought the actress was very believable as an abused woman. Cooper was also very stoic in his "hero" type of role. I thought the two of them shared some very good chemistry and that helped their relationship. Grant appears early on in the picture and he's very good as well. As for Laughton, he gets a very special screen credit and he certainly deserves it as he is great as the crazed man who will stop at nothing to hurt his wife and any man who likes her. By watching this film it's easy to see why he would eventually be cast in MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY.

At just seventy-five minutes the film has a very good pace and there's no question that it's one worth watching.

Wow does this film have some odd casting. While practically everyone aboard the submarine speaks American style English, Charles Laughton and Cary Grant are cast in two of the leading roles despite their accents. This sort of casting happened relatively frequently in older Hollywood films, but it is confusing to the viewer.

The film begins with Charles Laughton married to Tallulah Bankhead. It seems their friends have been talking about Tallulah's behaviors. Common knowledge is that she is cheating on poor old Charlie, though it turns out this is not true. Laughten is exceptionally paranoid and delights in playing like the slighted husband by starting these rumors himself! Later, he accuses one of his officers (Cary Grant) of committing adultery with Tallulah and delights in destroying Grant's career--even though the man did nothing inappropriate.

In response to Laughton's cruelty, Tallulah runs off and is rescued by dashing young Gary Cooper as she runs amok in an Arabian town. He falls for her but she rebuffs his advances because she's a decent woman. However, she does kiss him and soon makes her escape back home. Soon afterward, Cooper reports to her home--it seems he's the officer who's replacing Grant. However, seeing that his nice commanding officer is married to a woman that let him kiss her, he assumed (incorrectly) that Talullah is a cheat--not understanding that Laughton is certifiably insane.

Talullah comes on board the submarine that will be sailing later that night in order to try to explain herself to Cooper. However, when Laughton sees she's on board, he orders the boat to sail immediately, as he sees an insane chance to punish the two "lovers"--leading to a very exciting final portion of the film. In fact, from then on, the film is at its best. The final moments aboard the ship were exceptionally well done and Laughton's final scene quite memorable. Since this film was made "Pre-Production Code", the scene is particularly graphic and exciting.

Overall, although the film starts a bit slowly, it's a dandy film that combines a naval film with a psychological drama. I must admit that the final five minutes or so of the film seemed a tad awkward, but what proceeded was exciting and it's a heck of a good film.

... and in fact only the last thirty minutes or so has much suspense or tension.

Commander Charles Sturm (Charles Laughton) of the U. S. Navy is well liked by his men and their wives. However, his own wife Diana (Tallulah Bankhead) is not well liked. She appears snooty and glum. In fact she is just a very sad person because her husband is insanely jealous without cause and even violent sometimes. In fact he has been to a doctor and is just plain insane and delusional, and this has killed what love she had for him. He even has a fellow officer, Lt. Jaekel (Cary Grant) transferred for inefficiency just because he is so sure Jaekel and his wife are involved. His wife even has an impromptu conversation with Jaekel with her husband listening nearby to prove it's not true but he remains unconvinced.

So Diana takes a walk through the North African town in which they are stationed, meets a stranger, and gets romantically involved with that stranger. What she doesn't know is that the man is her husband's new second in command to replace the one he transferred, Lt. Sempter (Gary Cooper). So Sturm's old jealousies begin to rise up again, except for once he is right. And a submarine is a terrible place in which to play out a love triangle. Complications ensue.

This is noteworthy for the once-in-a-lifetime cast. Laughton gets an "introducing" credit as being that "noted British character actor". Laughton goes big and florid with his performance, Cooper gives his normal "aw shucks" performance, and Bankhead plays it quiet and sullen. Bankhead is best when she's the one handing out the withering one-liners, so the film may have worked better with a more conventional and vulnerable leading lady.

Cary Grant's charm and looks he displayed in his first movie, 1932's "This Is The Night," earned him a role in his next feature film, his second, as a potential love-interest to the wife of a naval ship commander in August 1932's "Devil and the Deep." Grant plays Lt. Jaeckel under the command of Charles Strum (Charles Laughton), a deeply flawed and extremely jealous husband to Diana Sturm (Talluhlah Bankhead). Based on Maurice Larrouy's novel, 'Sirenes et Tritons," Jaeckel sparks Strum's insane jealousy, which is unfounded by his wife's disinterest in the lieutenant. Jaeckel is quickly shipped out early in the film and is replaced by another lieutenant, Sempter (Gary Cooper), who it turns out gets kissy-wissy with Diana. Actress Bankhead said she accepted the role because she really wanted to get physically close to Cooper.

"Devil and the Deep" was Hollywood's first detailed look at the insides of a submarine. Once the U-Boat's commander Strum has his wife and her officer boyfriend Sempter underway in the underwater sub, he sets forth his plans to kill the lovers, taking along his crew for a suicidal maneuver. Laughton is clearly the star in the movie: the actor's menacing behavior fits the deranged Strum perfectly to a tee. The English-born and raised Laughton began acting on the stage in 1926 while dabbling in film during the late 1920s before securing his first major role in "Devil and the Deep." Tallulah Bankhead, primarily a stage actress, found acting in movies to be a complete bore. Her first two years in Hollywood, 1931 and 1932, were marked with her yearning to return to the live stage. "Devil and the Deep" was her second-to-last picture before reemerging on the screen twelve years later in Alfred Hitchcock's 1944 "Lifeboat."

"Devil and the Deep" marked the return to Hollywood for Gary Cooper. Burnt out and drained from an aggressive schedule of acting in ten movies within a two-year span, Cooper suffered from anemia and jaundice from his poor dietary habits. He decided to make a break from Los Angeles, feeling depressed and lonely. Reconnecting with an acquaintance, American heiress Dorothy Taylor, now a countess living in Rome, Italy, Cooper rehabilitated himself with her good food and great advice on nutrition. Developing a continental appreciation for the arts and customs of Europe, the actor's rough Western edges were smoothed out by the countess' patient tutorship. She took him on a ten-week big game safari hunting trip in Kenya, where he bagged a variety of trophy animals. His love of the wilderness kick in during the trip. In his role as the submarine's second-in-command, Cooper appears more comfortable and restrained in his role as the leader of the mutiny when it becomes obvious its commander is attempting to kill everyone on board.

"Devil and The Deep" is the only movie, besides a brief appearance in 1933's "Alice in Wonderland," Cooper and Grant ever shared credits in the same movie. This was a bit ironic since Grant had Cooper in mind when he selected his stage name Cary after the actor from Montana.