Murphy's War
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Murphy's War | |
|---|---|
 DVD cover |
|
| Directed by | Peter Yates |
| Produced by | Michael Deeley |
| Written by | Max Catto (novel) Stirling Silliphant |
| Starring | Peter O'Toole Siân Phillips Philippe Noiret Horst Janson |
| Running time | 107 minutes |
| Language | English |
| Allmovie profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
- For the novel by Gary Paulsen, see Murphy's War (novel)
Murphy's War is a 1971 war film starring Peter O'Toole as Murphy. It was directed by Peter Yates.
[edit] Plot
(Warning this synopsis discloses the plot)
It is the closing days of World War II and Irishman Murphy is the sole survivor of the crew of the merchant ship the SS Mount Kyle which has been sunk by a German U-Boat which then machine-gunned the survivors in the water. Murphy makes it ashore (to a missionary settlement on the Orinoco in Venezuela) where he is treated by a pacifist Quaker doctor.
When he discovers the U-Boat is hiding further up river, under the cover of the jungle, he sets about obsessively plotting his revenge to sink it by any means, possibly using the Grumman J2F Duck (a floatplane) which belonged to the Mount Kyle. The floatplane had been recovered but its wounded pilot died.
Murphy learns how to fly the plane in the most daring way, getting it out on the choppy waters of the river and discovering how the controls work by trial and error. This extensive flying scene involves lots of shots of the floatplane veering sharply to avoid buildings, the jungle and stalling.
Murphy soon finds the U-boat's hiding place and attempts to bomb it using home-made molotov cocktail bombs, an attempt which fails. Enraged he then attempts to ram the U-boat with a floating crane owned by the friendly Frenchman 'Louis'. This ramming attempt also fails as the U-boat dives under him. However the U-boat dives too hard and becomes stuck in a mudbank. Murphy uses the crane to recover a torpedo fired earlier from the U-boat and drops it on the trapped U-boat crew. In the explosion which follows it is presumed that the U-boat crew die and Murphy - the great survivor - also appears to die as the crane jib traps him on deck and the floating crane sinks in deep water.
The plot of Murphy's obsession echoes Herman Melville's Captain Ahab in Moby Dick and is also close to the film version of C.S. Forester's "The African Queen" the screenplay of which departed from Forester's novel.
Where "The African Queen" was set in WW1 Africa and follows the joint attempt of a man and a woman to sink an Imperial German Navy gunboat, Murphy's War is set in WW2 and follows one man's attempt to sink a Kriegsmarine U-boat against the objections of the Quaker doctor. The doctor was portrayed by actress Sian Phillips who was then Peter O'Toole's wife.
[edit] Production note
The part of the U-Boat was played by a Venezuelan submarine, the former USS Tilefish (SS-307).
The floating crane was, itself, a former WW2 tank landing craft.
[edit] External links
|
||||||||||||||||||||
