The Sea Shall Not Have Them Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		2.5

The Sea Shall Not Have Them Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman January 27, 2024

If he's remembered much at all these days, Lewis Gilbert's name probably tends to ring a bell mostly with fans of the relatively early James Bond films, as Gilbert helmed You Only Live Twice, The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker. Some devoted cineastes may know that Gilbert also directed a number of other notable films like the original Alfie, Educating Rita and Shirley Valentine, offering three distinctive character portraits of rather "quirky" individuals. With regard to this particular double feature from Cohen, one other relatively well remembered film directed by Gilbert, Sink the Bismarck!, may be the most salient Gilbert film to list to jar memories, since it, like to two films in this release, offers World War II settings.

If Albert R.N., this film's "sibling" on this disc, may unavoidably remind some of any number of POW films ranging from Stalag 17 to The Great Escape, The Sea Shall Not Have Them may at least fitfully recall Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat, since this film also follows a bunch of people attempting to survive some very stormy seas in a tiny craft (in this case, an inflatable dingy). There's no German spy on board this time, though the fraying emotions of the survivors lead to tensions anyway, despite all of them ostensibly being on "the same side".

While marquee stars Michael Redgrave and Dirk Bogarde are two of the crew from a downed fighter who take to the dingy, there's at least as much focus on a team of rescuers assigned to the North Sea who are desperately in search of the dingy. A number of men on the rescue craft are still "learning the ropes", so to speak, and there's both anxiety and a bit of humor that arise due to various mishaps. There's also a bit of intrigue involving a top secret briefcase that Redgrave's character seems to think is at least as important as any of the humans on the lifeboat. Somewhat hilariously, Anton Diffring is on hand in this film, as he is in Albert R.N., as a Nazi.

The Sea Shall Not Have Them Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Sea Shall Not Have Them is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Cohen Film Collection, an imprint of Cohen Media Group, with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.33:1. This is by far the rougher looking presentation of the two films on this disc, and the entire element is littered with sometimes pretty significant damage. Some of this can be traced to understandable uses of stock footage for any number of sequences involving the rescue boats and even some of the airplanes in the story, but even many of the actual narrative moments have rather large scratches, nicks and even what looks like some emulsion damage. The entire presentation is on the fuzzy side more often than not, and contrast is not especially strong, giving a kind of slate gray look a lot of the time. There are some actually relatively decent moments on tap, mostly in interior settings (i.e., not the lifeboat material). Some of this presentation probably drifts down toward 2.5 territory, but not so often that I set my score there.

The Sea Shall Not Have Them Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Sea Shall Not Have Them features DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono audio. This track is certainly not overly problematic, though there's just a hint of distortion and/or crackling in some of Malcolm Arnold's more hyperbolic underscore cues. The lifeboat material is awash (no pun intended) in ambient environmental effects, which are relatively lifelike. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly. Optional English subtitles are available, but whoever was hired to do them was unable to decipher several lines (which I had no problem understanding).

The Sea Shall Not Have Them Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Cohen has packaged The Sea Shall Not Have Them and Albert R.N. together on one disc, with the following sole supplement:

• Trailer for Albert R.N. (HD; 1:27) is a new trailer advertising Cohen's "digital restoration".

The Sea Shall Not Have Them Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

There's a who's who of British character actors helping to elevate this piece, but its focus is weirdly dispersed between the lifeboat characters and those on the rescue craft, with a few passing moments given over to various characters "back home" waiting for word of the rescue. An uneasy balancing act between high drama and low comedy also adds to a somewhat wobbly tone. Video is pretty badly damaged, but audio is relatively fine, for anyone who may be considering making a purchase.