Submarine Patrol

Fairly non-descript submarine picture from Ford. His expressive tendencies do come out here occasionally, most prominently as the boats pull out of the harbor on their first major mission. Ford manages to pack in lots of humor here, some more subtle than was typical for his broadly comic habits. He also manages to underplay the love story, making it comic in an unexpected and meaningful way.

Even the great John Ford made pointless movies. Here is one when at Twentieth Century Fox during a time he was making a lot of ambitious pictures. Submarine Patrol (1938) is definitely not one of those. And I wouldn't claim there's much Ford'ian about it either. Except for the one thing that keeps this mildly pleasant. The characters. Ford knew how to give personality to his characters, and he get plenty of quality character actors to give character to Submarine Patrol.