The Cruel Sea (1953)

"You know, when you lose a ship, it's like losing a bit of yourself."

I'm becoming increasingly fascinated by British war films made in the decade or so after the Second World War, after a few years had passed and there had been time for reflection on this extraordinary event that had twisted everybody's lives out of shape for six long years, with unimaginable pressure and stress. There's a lot of action, yes, but also a lot of inherent philosophical musing, humanity, and deconstruction of the "stiff upper lip" trope, which never was straightforward.

On the surface, this is the saga of a ship- well, mostly the one ship- and it's crew, as they live and develop over the six years of the War on an Atlantic convoy, protecting the merchant navy from u-boats. There are bit action set pieces- rescuing mainers whose vessels have sunk, chasing u-boats and, indeed, abandoning ship and trying to survive overnight on a tiny little raft.

Yet this is, more than anything, a film about people, in all their complexity. One of the crew hopes to marry his shipmate's sister, only for her to be killed in an air raid. An officer dies a watery death, knowing his wife is sleeping with another man. The first officer wonders whether proposing to his partner is the right thing or not- is there a place for permanence among the uncertainties of war?

This is by no means one of the very best of its genre, but the cast is solid and the script, if not quite first class, is raised up by its themes and subject matter. And, if nothing else, it taught me how to pronounce "coxswain".

Waterloo (1970)

"My God, Sir! I've lost my leg!"

"My God, Sir! So you have!"

There are three striking things about this superb film: Rod Steiger's electrifying, extraordinarily charismatic and career-defining performance as Napoleon, the incredible scope and accuracy of the battle scenes, and the fact that it was made in Brezhnev's Soviet Union with an international cast. That just seems bizarre.

Still, it's an extraordinary piece of cinema and one of the most accurate historical films ever made; even the dialogue is mostly documented from real life and I recognised a few of Wellington's. The only inaccuracies I could spot were the constant references to "Belgium" (not a country until 1830) and the slight musical reference to the modern German national anthem as Blucher's Prussians arrive to save the day. This is anachronistic; the tune existed at the time but it's lyrics were a paean to Emperor Franz of Austria, hardly a friend of Prussia. The Habsburgs were hardly friends of pan-German nationalism, which in any case wouldn't really become a thing until after the revolutions of 1848. Anyway, the film...

 Steiger steals the show as Napoleon, a charismatic genius refusing to give in to the failing health of his body, but Christopher Plummer also deserves high praise for his unflappable and blunt Wellington, refusing permission to have Napoleon assassinated ahead of the battle as such things are Simply Not Done. The opening scenes are extraordinary, though: Napoleon rants and raves like Hitler in Downfall before finally abdicating, only to escape from Elba with but 1,000 troops and suede power again through sheer magnetic charisma. It's eyebrow-raising here to see a somewhat corpulent Orson Welles in a cameo as Louis XVIII.

This is a true epic in scope, both thematically and visually. If you haven't seen it.. sorry for the spoiler, but Napoleon loses. Sorry.