The Bedford Incident

Working my way through the Sidney Poitier movies I recorded during his time as TCM's Star of the Month back in September, we're now up to The Bedford Incident.

Poitier plays Ben Munceford, a journalist who in the opening scene of the movie is seen on a helicopter which is landing on a US Navy destroyer, the Bedford, somewhere in the North Atlantic. He's there to do a piece on the destroyer's work, which is to patrol the waters to prevent submarines and fishing boats from getting into the territorial waters of the various NATO members; on board for this particular mission is a West German attaché, Commodore Schrepke (Eric Portman). Munceford picked this particular destroyer because of its captain, Eric Finlander (Richard Widmark).

Capt. Finlander is none too happy about having a journalist on board, in part because he runs an extremely tight ship -- perhaps one that's too tight. One of his idiosyncrasies is that he doesn't see much need for a full doctor in sick bay, which is part of why he doesn't like the new doctor assigned by the Navy, Lt. Cmdr. Potter (Martin Balsam). That, and his idiosyncrasy probably got him overlooked for promotion after a previous incident where his actions could have been controversially praised or panned.

Sick bay isn't examining any patients, but some food waste that was on the surface, waste that was clearly from a Soviet sub, leading to the question of how old that waste is. It also leads Finlander to start a sonar search with the talented Seaman Queffle (Wally Cox) at the sonar station. They eventually find the Soviet sub and start following it; presumably the sub somewhere under the sea knows that it's being followed too.

But then an odd thing happens: the Soviet sub enters the territorial waters of Greenland. This is technically a violation of international law, and Finlander is right to want to force the sub to surface in order to find out what's going on. But the sub doesn't surface, and this being the Denmark Strait between Greenland and Iceland, the waters are dangerous with icebergs around. Still, Finlander continues his pursuit of the sub.

The figuring is that eventually the sub will be forced to surface. It's not a nuclear sub, so it doesn't produce enough power to keep creating fresh oxygen, only being able to do that at the surface. And it's going to have to surface after 24 hours. So Finlander keeps up the search, keeping his crew at general quarters (ie. battle stations) to the point that they may finally crack. Munceford watches and, not being a serviceman himself, comes to rather different conclusions about what to do.

I'll stop there because I don't want to give away the climax. But I will say that The Bedford Incident is an excellent movie. It's in some ways a character study set against the backdrop of a very good and tense story. One of the things I really liked about the story is that we never see the Soviet sub or hear any of the Soviets on the sub or any of the surface ships in the area. (There's one brief shot of a Soviet fishing ship that's believed to be a disguise for the naval vessel to which the sub is associated.) Widmark is quite good as Capt. Finlander, and Balsam also shines. Poitier, despite his second billing, doesn't have quite so much to do here. One of the interesting things is that after 15 years in Hollywood, this was about the first time Poitier got to play a character where being black was not germane to the plot. Finlander and Munceford may clash, but it's not because Munceford is black; it's easy to imagine Finlander clashing with any journalist.

I found the cinematography interesting, too; the ship's tight spaces are very well captured while the black-and-white looks slightly grainy at times, serving to give of a feeling of being there with the participants, like raw documentary footage.

The Bedford Incident is available on DVD should you wish to watch, and is a movie that I can very highly recommend.