The Bedford Incident (1965)

I recently determined that my most underrepresented year, in terms of American films seen is 1965. That is going back to at least 1945 but probably through the entirety of sound films. I had only seen eight 1965 theatrically released American films of that year, so I have set about to remedy this and get it at lest into the double digits. While casting about for what 1965 release I would watch first I was looking through an article in the New York Times about the television series The Amazing Mr. Maisel, and how actual period New York settings inspired the look of the show. One of the pictures accompanying the article was of a city street and dated 1965, on a theater marquee I could read the title The Bedford Incident and determined that would be the next movie of that vintage I would consume.

I knew very little about the movie going in, not even that it had been based on a 1963 novel of the same name. The movie starts with a helicopter delivering two passengers to a navy destroy in the North Atlantic. The passengers are the new ships doctor (Martin Balsam) and a magazine writer dropped off to do a piece on the ship (Sidney Poitier). Nowhere in the films dialogue is the fact that Poitier's Ben Munceford's being black mentioned, I don't think the part was written specifically with a black man in mind which makes the casting rather progressive, though if you think about it Poitier was probably the only Hollywood actor you could do that with, to wide acceptance, at this time.

Munceford quickly notices the odd cult of personality built around the ships Captain Eric Finlander (Richard Widmark, very good). In fact he know of the cult of personality before he came, it was part of what interested Munceford in doing the story. Finlander had been turned down for promotion to Admiral because of his publicly expressing the view that the United States should have taken a harder line in responding to the Cuban missile crises. Exiled somewhat Finlander becomes obsessive when his ship spots evidence of Soviet submarine activity in the area. He pursues the sub, Captain Ahab like, follows it doggedly, preventing it from surfacing for air, ramping up tensions in direct violation of orders. Munceford attempts to talk him down, as does Commodore Wolfgang Schrepke, a West German officer, a World War Two veteran who is onboard as a NATO observer. Their success or failure in this endeavor will determine the ultimate nature of The Bedford Incident, which I won't spoil because its worth going in not knowing how things will turn out. I was really surprised  by how good and tense this movie is, there are a lot of really good dialogue scenes in addition to the navel action. Turns out this movie was a real find, I'd happily watch it again. ***1/2