Under Ten Flags Reviews

Heflin is the commander of a German merchant raider during WW II who employs a bewildering array of tricks--repainting the ship, flying neutral flags, erecting false smokestacks, and even having crewmen dress as women passengers--to lure Allied ships near enough to be blown out of the water with his boat's concealed guns. Despite this deviousness, Heflin is a compassionate man who picks up survivors, to the dismay of fanatical Nazi lieutenant Ericson, who thinks the enemy should be left to drown. Meanwhile, at the British Admiralty, Laughton is assigned to discover the cause of the mysterious sinkings, and although Laughton and Heflin never meet, the film concerns the battle of wits between them. Laughton finally gets his big break when Nicol, an American agent in Paris who bears a striking resemblance to a certain German naval officer, boldly walks into the German headquarters in broad daylight and walks out again with pictures of a coded sea chart in his miniature camera. From then on the fate of Heflin's ship is sealed. The British dispatch a number of ships to the area where they know the ship to be working and destroy it, although Heflin survives. The scenes that deal directly with the conflict are the best, and Nicol's theft of the Nazi codes is quite suspenseful. But the film is bogged down in subplots, including Ericson's attraction to a busty French prisoner, Demongeot, who rejects him when she discovers the depth of his Nazi sentiments, and Heflin's philosophic discussions with another of the prisoners. Laughton is simply outrageous as he mugs his way through one of his last roles, but Heflin is excellent as the intelligent, humanitarian German commander. Based on the true story of the German raider Atlantis.