We spent the last two weeks with the Brits in that desperate middle time after the outbreak but before the United States entered World War II.

And this week is no different.

As we discussed in our reviews of Dunkirk and Darkest hour, this isn't a time that comfortably fits into popular narratives of the war.

This wasn't a good look for anyone, appeasement giving way to desperation for the UK and privileged indifference from the US.

In going back to address this time period, Dunkirk and Darkest Hour, films whose creators

wanted to celebrate British heroism heroism threaded a needle to avoid

highlighting some uncomfortable truths about the early days of the war. Today's film

is a bit of a stunner in that context because it came out in 1958 and much of the modern World War II myth had not yet entered the canon.

People didn't need a myth, they remembered it. And while this film is not a scathing polemic about the evils of war as such,

it feels distinctly less like propaganda than our two previous films.

But I need to stop comparing them now because Adam will get

very cranky with me. This film is about the tugboat captains who brought

incapacitated ships back to port after German U-boat or dive bomber attacks.

The tugboats are badly outgunned and the casualty rates among the crews are high.

Our American hero, William Holden, shows up having slid into the job via a commission in the Canadian Army.

He's got a local friend in Trevor Howard, who also captains a tugboat,

and not long after the two reunite, we meet Sophia Loren, the housebound

woman who cohabitates the apartment where Howard lives. Their relationship is vague due to the

haze code's prescription surrounding the depiction of

fornicators, but we all do the math.

Howard gives Holden a spare key to the flat, proposes marriage to Sophia Loren, and promptly buys the farm trying to rescue a ship.

What's heavily implied here is that being in love with Sophia Loren is a death sentence.

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