Atlantic (1929)

This is one of the earliest British-made talkies and I think you really have to take that embryonic spirit into account if you’re to get much from this drama. We embark upon the “Atlantic” for a cruise across that self-same body of water and as they head towards something we know to be inevitable, we encounter the usual mix of the hoi polloi below decks and landed gentry above and enjoy some of their rather procedural and histrionic antics. Now if you’re a regular theatre visitor, then you’ll be familiar with the concept of projecting your voice so those up in the gods can hear you enunciate. Well here, despite the presence of microphones mere inches from the actors, the likes of Madeleine Carroll and even the more demure Helen Haye belt out their lines as if they were, themselves, trying to summon help from a passing ship or, indeed, from the Almighty himself. That sound, though, when turned over to the effects technicians gives us quite a decent source of peril as the voyage progresses and coupled with some really quite effective visual ones of panic and desperation towards the end, gives the film some unexpected life. The characterisations do suffer from some fairly superficial writing at times but the assemblage is competent and those on the upper decks are entirely convincing of the attitudes of those early twentieth century travellers heading to the new world for a variety of purposes. No, it’s not great, but given just a few years earlier the idea of a film like this was nigh on impossible to stage let alone produce, I think it’s nowhere near as bad as it might have been. There is no doubt, though, that this is a piece of cinema nostalgia rather than a robust drama - but I found it watchable enough for ninety minutes.