The long voyage home.

**Captain Kong** · 1st July 2015, 02:33 PM

I have the video of this film, a good one even tho` a young John Wayne has a phony Swedish accent.
Quite realistic , the crowd living in the focsle of a tramp and then the WW2 starts. The ship is trying to sail to London from the West Indies and is attacked, The crowd pay off in London and strait into the alehouse with the women ,, as we used to do, they are skint and then have to sign on again..... Done that myself a few times.
Here is the write up......
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The Long Voyage Home

The Glencairn, a British steamer returning home to England from the West Indies, stops in Baltimore to pick up a load of munitions. The crew includes Ole Olsen, a young Swede who wants nothing more than to return home to his wife and is protected by fellow Swede Axel; Smitty, who carries the secret shame of losing his wife to alcoholism; and the brawling but loyal Driscoll. The voyage proves more dangerous than any of them could have imagined - with violent storms, a kidnapping and attacks by Nazi planes, not all of the close-knit crew will make it home alive.

The Long Voyage Home (1940) was adapted by Dudley Nichols, who updated and wove together four early one-act sea-themed plays written by Nobel Prize-winning playwright Eugene O'Neill from 1914 to 1919. Not only was Nichols a friend of O'Neill, he later directed a film version of Mourning Becomes Electra (1947). The result here, while rather free in its treatment of O'Neill's original material, pleased O'Neill so much that he counted it among his favorite films and kept a personal print of it which he viewed regularly. Director John Ford was under contract with Fox at the time but was allowed to make one film a year outside the studio. Together with his buddy Merian Cooper he founded the independent production company Argosy Pictures, named after his fishing boat. Walter Wanger, with whom he had collaborated so successfully on Stagecoach (1939), agreed to finance the film. Subsequent Argosy productions included The Fugitive (1947), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and Wagon Master (1950).

One significant factor in the film's artistic success is undoubtedly its strong ensemble acting from John Ford regulars such as Thomas Mitchell, Ward Bond and John Qualen. For John Wayne the role of Olsen, the idealistic young sailor, was a particular challenge since it required him to adopt a Swedish accent and an altogether different persona from his usual cowboy roles. Danish actress Osa Massen worked closely with him to develop a credible accent. Wayne recalls, "The night before I went to work for the first day's shooting on that picture I worked until probably midnight on a picture that we'd made in six days for Republic. I had to play a straight part as my accent couldn't clash with John Qualen's, who was playing a comic Swede. I wanna tell you, that was quite a switch from the night before, knocking people around and jumping on a horse." Although some critics today consider John Wayne miscast in this role, particularly due to the Swedish accent, Wayne himself considered it one of his finest performances. Noted stage actress Mildred Natwick made her screen debut here as the prostitute. Natwick said of the production: "Ford was a wonderful director, and I think he knew how nervous I was. He really told me everything to do; it was marvelous coaching. When I had to make my entrance, I remember he said, 'Why don't you have your sweater down and sort of be pulling it up over your shoulder?' [...] He just made me so comfortable. He took a lot of time and nurtured me along."

Gregg Toland made The Long Voyage Home among the most beautifully photographed black-and-white films of the era, its low-key lighting and deep focus photography contributing to the pessimistic atmosphere of the film and directly foreshadowing his work on Citizen Kane (1941). Variety characterized Toland's work here as "a masterpiece." Wanger, who considered it an "art" film and hoped to appeal to an elite audience, commissioned ten paintings by various contemporary artists depicting scenes from the film and organized a traveling exhibit at cities across the country. Although The Long Voyage Home was praised lavishly by the critics - John Mosher of The New Yorker called it "one of the most magnificent films in film history" - it failed to turn a profit at the box office in comparison with lighter fare released at the same time such as the Betty Grable musical Down Argentine Way (1940). Nonetheless, the film received seven Academy Award nominations: Best Picture, Best Screenplay, Best Black and White Cinematography, Best editing, Best Score, Best Sound and Best Visual Effects. Ford was so proud of the film that he displayed stills from it on the walls of his home.
Plot[edit]

The film tells the story of the crew aboard a British cargo ship named the SS Glencairn, during World War II, on the long voyage home from the West Indies to Baltimore and then to England. The ship carries a cargo of high-explosives.

On liberty, after a night of drinking in bars in the West Indies, the crew returns to the tramp steamer and set sail for Baltimore.

They're a motley group: a middle-aged Irishman Driscoll (Thomas Mitchell), a young Swedish ex-farmer Ole Olsen (John Wayne), the spiteful steward Cocky (Barry Fitzgerald); the brooding Lord Jim-like Englishman Smitty (Ian Hunter), and others.

After the ship picks up a load of dynamite in Baltimore, the rough seas they encounter become nerve-racking to the crew. When the anchor breaks loose, Yank (Ward Bond) is injured in the effort to secure it. With no doctor on board, nothing can be done for his injury, and he dies.

They're also concerned that Smitty might be a German spy because he's secretive. After they force Smitty to show them his letters from home it turns out that Smitty is an alcoholic who has run away from his family. When they near port, a German plane attacks the ship, killing Smitty in a burst of machine gun fire. The rest of the crew members decide not to sign on for another voyage on the Glencairn and go ashore, determined to help Ole return to his family in Sweden, whom he has not seen in ten years.

At a seedy bar Ole is tricked into taking a drugged drink, and he is shanghaied aboard another ship, the Amindra. Driscoll and the rest of the crew rescue him from the ship, but Driscoll is accidentally left behind in the confusion. As the crew straggles back to the Glencairn the next morning to sign on for another voyage, they learn that the Amindra was sunk by German torpedoes, killing all on board.