Devil and the Deep

Not too long ago I picked up a box set of early Cary Grant movies, made when he was at Paramount. Technically I think it's two box sets, one of comedies and one of dramas, repackaged. In any case, the set had several movies I haven't yet seen, and some I'm glad to have on DVD now, like Hot Saturday. I decided to watch one of Grant's earliest films off the colleciton, The Devil and the Deep.

This is so early in Grant's career that although he gets fourth billing, he's written out after 10 or 15 minutes. Grant plays Lt. Jaeckel, who serves on a submarine under Cmdr. Charles Sturm (Charles Laughton in his first Hollywood film getting an "introducing" credit) based out of a port somewhere in North Africa. As the movie opens, Jaeckel has a note from Sturm's wife Diana (Tallulah Bankhead); apparently they danced together at some function. But the note is dropped on the floor and Cmdr. Sturm picks it up, leading Sturm to suspect that perhaps Jaeckel is seeing his wife on the sly. Now that would be a no-no under military regulations, but worse is that Cmdr. Sturm is insanely jealous as Diana well knows.

Cmdr. Sturm uses his rank to get Jaeckel reassigned to a different sub, which is why Cary Grant is written out of the movie so early. (To be fair, Paramount wouldn't have known at the time that Grant was going to go on to become a big star.) More important in terms of the movie is that at home that night, Cmdr. Sturm pretty much threatens his wife, showing why she considers him insanely jealous. Diana runs out of the house for her own safety, although she doesn't realize that she's running into danger as there's some sort of street festival going on and a crowd of lusty Arab men is not the safest place for a western woman to be. Fortunately for her, there's a western guy there, Sempter (Gary Cooper). He pulls Diana aside into one of the shops in the bazaar and, to satisfy the merchant, buys Diana some cheap perfume, which is obviously going to be a bit of foreshadowing.

This is the first time the two have met, and they wind up going out into the desert to spend an evening together. This is naturally something that would make Cmdr. Sturm even more jealous if he were to find out about the relationship. As you might guess, Cmdr. Sturm is indeed going to find out, and the perfume is going to be part of why. The reason is that Sumpter is in fact Lt. Sumpter, and he's in town because he's the replacement for Lt. Jaeckel. In Sumpter's defense, he doesn't know when he first meets Diana that she is in fact Mrs. Sturm; that only comes the next day when Sumpter goes to give his transfer papers to Cmdr. Sturm. The transfer papers bear some traces of that perfume that Sumpter bought for Diana the night before.

The sub is set to head out on a training exercise that night, and Diana goes to the sub to warn Sumpter of just how insane her husband is. She's hoping to get on the sub, warn Sumpter, and get off before the sub sets out. But when Cmdr. Sturm gets to the port, he hears from the sentry on duty that his wife is on board. So as a sign of how insanely jealous he is, he orders the sub to set out early, before his wife can get off the sub. But that's only the half of it. Cmdr. Sturm is planning to engineer a murder-suicide in which he'll sink the sub, leading to the deaths of himself, his wife, and Sumpter. Now there's also an entire crew of innocents on board the sub.

Devil and the Deep is a really interesting little movie thanks in part to it having been released in the pre-Code era. There aren't as many strong pre-Code touches as in some other movies, but it was also a time when movies still were all over the place in terms of plotting. The idea of Cmdr. Sturm being crazy enough to sink his own sub is really out there, and Laughton's oversized acting works here. Bankhead's scenery-chewing also works, while Cooper has a poorly-written character, which is one of the issues the movie has. While Devil and the Deep is certainly interesting, it's also uneven. The positives do outweigh the negatives, but there are certainly reasons why the movie isn't all that well known despite the big cast.