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In the early 1990's, an essay in "Film Comment" magazine by film critic Elliot Stein started the reconsideration of Otto Preminger's "In Harm's Way", which opened with less than enthusiastic reviews upon its release. Audiences and critics had come to expect either polemic motion pictures or big budgeted productions from Preminger, after titles such as "The Man with the Golden Arm" and "Exodus." But back in 1965, Preminger released this film about Second World War, where personal situations seemed to overshadow the battle scenes, and on top of that he shot it in black and white and wide-screen, a common practice in those days (even Preminger made that same year "Bunny Lake Is Missing", a thriller more apt for monochromatic wide-screen), but rarely a combination for a spectacle with a huge cast of stars. As pointed out by the author of the essay, "In Harm's Way" followed the vein of earlier Preminger films centred on polemic issues, American institutions, or big world issues: "The Moon Is Blue" dealt with virginity, "The Man with the Golden Arm" with drugs, "Anatomy of a Murder" with the justice system, "Advise and Consent" with the US Senate and homosexuality, "The Cardinal" with the Vatican, and "Exodus" with the creation of Israel. This time Preminger focused on the US Navy but with a twist: when the film ends it has cleverly illustrated its notion that the happiness and functionality of the couple are requisites for the efficiency of the Navy, the American society, the nation, and the world as a whole. "In Harm's Way" is more focused on basic emotions, and it frames the story with the relationship of a married couple. In the first scene we meet William and Beverly McConnell (Tom Tryon and Paula Prentiss) happily dancing by a swimming pool, in an officers' ball. Their idyll is rapidly interrupted by the wild swing of a drunken blonde, Liz Eddington (Barbara Bouchet), a married woman who is having an affair with an officer (Hugh O'Brian.) Liz and the officer leave the party and go to a beach, where their love making is interrupted as the Japanese attack Pearl Harbour. From then on, while battles create separation and tension, we are mostly concerned with the main characters' private lives. On one hand, we see Capt. Torrey's (John Wayne) dealing with the estrangement from his son Jeremiah (Brandon De Wilde) and his relationship with Nurse Maggie Haynes (Patricia Neal), while Jeremiah courts Maggie's roommate, Annalee Dorne (Jill Haworth.) On the other hand, we see Com. Paul Eddington (Kirk Douglas) coping with his wife's infidelity and death, fighting Officer O'Wynn (Patrick O'Neal), and raping Annalee, before his pseudo-heroic denouement. Every now and then, we return to the McConnells, who seem to be a rather unobtrusive leit motif "in harm's way" (Tryon and Prentiss respectively received fourth and fifth billing, although they have little screen time.) First, Torrey communicates Bev of William's disappearance, later Bev asks William to impregnate her before he goes on a destroyer duty, and finally the couple is reunited in San Francisco for a brief stay, after which the Navy wins its "first victory" (as the film was known in many countries.) "In Harm's Way" has a rich early score by Jerry Goldsmith, in which the maestro had the opportunity to compose music for war scenes, love themes, dance tunes for the officers' ball, "ethnic" music of the South Seas, a theme for John Wayne's character (known as "The Rock"), which eventually turns into the "Battle Hymn" of "In Harm's Way", following the screenplay's strategy of turning the action hero into an icon of the United States; and a very dark, ominous "end title" music that evokes the theme of war affecting human relations that runs throughout the story. Goldsmith dedicated the love theme neither to the Torrey-Maggie affair, nor to the Jeremiah-Annalee romance, but to the McConnells. Forget the model ships critics complained about, and enjoy the last of the better part of Otto Preminger's filmography.
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