Operation Frankton

Another person who was honored last August in TCM's Summer Under the Stars and whose movies are getting close to expiring from my DVR as a result is José Ferrer. A movie of which I'd heard the title but had never actually seen the movie is The Cockleshell Heroes, so I recorded it to do a post on it.

Intertitles just after the opening credits inform us a bit about the history of the Royal Marines, which were founded in the late 17th century but didn't get the "Royal" appellation until April 1802. Fast forward 140 years, to early 1942. This is, of course, the middle of the European theater of World War II. The Nazis have occupied a goodly portion of the continent, and are using various ports to make a mess of Allied shipping and naval movements in the Atlantic. Maj. Stringer (José Ferrer) shows up seemingly unannounced at a British military base, since he decided to kayak in which seems like a serious military breach.

Of course, that's part of the plan. Maj. Stringer is sent to where he's going to have his office, next to Capt. Hugh Thompson (Trevor Howard). Capt. Thompson has been in the military since 1918, but is only a captain, so outranked by Maj. Stringer, which is a bit of a plot point since it implies that Thompson did something that prevented him from rising above the rank of captain. In any case, Stringer informs Thompson of his plan, which is to come up with a type of collapsible two-man kayak (they us the word "canoe" because British English considers kayaks a type of canoe) and paddle up the estuary of the Gironde to the city of Bordeaux, where the Germans have a base from which they're attacking the British. Then, the commandos will attach magnetic mines to the hulls of the ships, which should blow up and sink the ships.

Now, if you've seen enough war movies, you'll know that there are several standard tropes. One is that the first part of the plot involves preparations for the operation. Maj. Stringer brings in a bunch of Marines to see who might be most suitable for the operation, and eventually whittles the crew down to about a dozen who were able to get across Britain dressed as Nazis in a way that frankly makes the British populace look stupid. But the men don't really respect Stringer, with the result that their first practice event trying to paddle up the Thames at night is a total disaster. There is, however, one funny scene involving what is actually a live mine and the marines' attempt to dispose of it at sea dressed only in their swimming trunks. (I did, however, wonder why they trained in trunks since the real operation would have them in a frogman's swimming outfit.)

And then they head off to the southwest of France for the difficult operation. One of the boats gets damaged, and those two men quickly get captured by the Germans, although they refuse to give up any information. The others do make it to Bordeaux, as you might guess since the title of the movie is The Cockleshell Heroes. But can they escape?

As you might have guessed from the title of this blog post, The Cockleshell Heroes is based on a real operation called "Operation Frankton" that tried to destroy German ships in Bordeaux. However, the real Operation Frankton was a failure because of its secrecy: it apparently interfered with another operation that likely would have had a higher chance of success and didn't cause as much damage as the British might have liked. José Ferrer directed, and the direction feels formulaic, although that may be down to the script as well, from actor/director Bryan Forbes.

Having watched The Cockleshell Heroes, I can see why it's not so well remembered. It's by-the-numbers, but something that in the end is entertaining enough if unmemorable.