THE LONG VOYAGE HOME (1940) ¢ ¢ ¢
D: John Ford
John Wayne, Thomas Mitchell, Ian Hunter,
Barry Fitzgerald, Ward Bond, John Qualen,
Arthur Shields, Mildred Natwick, Wilfred Lawson
Early in World War Two, a merchant vessel crosses the Atlantic over hostile seas, with a cargo of high explosives earmarked for the British war effort. The crew's the usual gang of boisterous, hard-drinking salts, plus a tall, lanky Swede who's leaving the ocean behind and heading back to the family farm outside Stokholm. There are some gaps in the overall narrative, but Ford's focus is more on the incidentals: the death of a sailor (Ward Bond), a kangaroo court that forms when a crewman's suspected of espionage, an opening sequence that wordlessly captures the casual boredom of life at sea, and a lengthy episode in which the men, on shore leave, barely escape being shanghaied (and one of them doesn't). The script doesn't give Wayne much to say, and since he's trying to say it with a Swedish accent, maybe it's just as well.
