The Bedford Incident

The Bedford Incident (aka Aux Postes De Combat) is a 1965 British-American Cold War film starring Richard Widmark and Sidney Poitier and co-produced by Widmark. The cast also features Eric Portman, James MacArthur, Martin Balsam and Wally Cox, as well as early appearances by Donald Sutherland and Ed Bishop. The screenplay by James Poe is based on the 1963 book by Mark Rascovich, which borrowed from the plot of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick; at one point in the film, the captain is advised he is "not chasing whales now".[1][2][3][4][5]

The Bedford Incident
Theatrical poster
Directed byJames B. Harris
Produced by
Screenplay byJames Poe
Based onThe Bedford Incident
by Mark Rascovich
Starring
Music byGerard Schurmann
CinematographyGulbert Taylor
Edited byJohn Jympson
Color processBlack and white
Production
company
Bedford Productions Ltd.
Distributed byColumbia Pictures
Release date
  • 14 October 1965 (1965-10-14) (London)
  • October 11, 1965 (1965-10-11) (Connecticut)
  • November 2, 1965 (1965-11-02) (New York City)
Running time
102 minutes
Country
  • United Kingdom
  • United States
LanguageEnglish

The film was directed by James B. Harris, who, until then, had been best known as Stanley Kubrick's producer. The two parted ways over a disagreement about the film that became Kubrick's noted Cold War nuclear-confrontation film, Dr. Strangelove; Harris had wanted it to be told as a serious thriller, but Kubrick wanted it to be a comic farce (which it became). Harris remained focused on developing a serious nuclear-confrontation film, resulting in The Bedford Incident.[6][7][8]

Plot

The American destroyer USS Bedford (DLG-113) detects a Soviet submarine in the GIUK gap near the coast of Greenland.[lower-alpha 1] Although the U.S. and the Soviet Union are not at war, Captain Eric Finlander mercilessly harries his prey while civilian photojournalist Ben Munceford and NATO naval advisor Commodore Wolfgang Schrepke look on with mounting alarm. Finlander exploits the fact that the Russian sub has to surface periodically to replenish air and recharge batteries because it is not nuclear-powered; knowing full well it will make the Soviets more desperate.

Also aboard the Bedford are Ensign Ralston, an inexperienced young officer constantly being criticised by his captain for small errors and Lieutenant Commander Chester Potter, the ship's new doctor, who is a recently recalled reservist.

Munceford is aboard to photograph life on a Navy destroyer but his real interest is Finlander who recently was passed over for promotion to rear admiral. Munceford is curious whether a comment made by Finlander regarding the American intervention in Cuba is the reason for his lack of promotion. This prompts the captain to become openly hostile to Munceford, who he sees as a civilian who is interfering into military matters for questioning the risks involved in continually harrying the Soviet submarine.

The crew becomes increasingly fatigued by the unrelenting pursuit as the captain continually demands full attention to the instruments. At the same time, Finlander becomes intolerant of anyone who questions his tactics including the ship's doctor who advises him that crew are feeling the pressure but the captain will not relent.

When the submarine is found, it ignores Finlander's order to surface and identify itself. The captain, angered by this defiant act, orders the Bedford to run over its snorkel, ordering that it be logged as an "unidentified floating object". He then orders the Bedford to arm weapons and withdraw to a distance to wait for the submerged sub to run out of air and be forced to surface. Confidently he reassures Munceford and Schrepke that he is in command of the situation and that he will not fire first but "If he fires one, I'll FIRE ONE".

A tired Ensign Ralston mistakes Finlander's remark as a command to "fire one". He launches an anti-submarine rocket which destroys the submarine. Sonar then detects four Soviet nuclear-armed torpedoes targeting the destroyer. Finlander initially gives basic orders to evade but then silently steps outside the bridge. Munceford follows frantically pleading with him to do something. But the captain has realised his actions have sealed the fate of everyone on board as the ship cannot evade the nuclear torpedoes. The film ends with still shots of various crewmen "melting" as if the celluloid film were burning as the Bedford and her crew are vaporised in an atomic blast. The film's final image is a mushroom cloud.

Cast
  • Richard Widmark as Captain Eric Finlander, USN
  • Sidney Poitier as Ben Munceford
  • James MacArthur as Ensign Ralston (credited as James Macarthur)
  • Martin Balsam as Lt. Cmdr. Chester Potter, M.D., U.S.N.
  • Wally Cox as Seaman Merlin Queffle
  • Eric Portman as Commodore Wolfgang Schrepke, Bundesmarine
  • Michael Kane as Commander Allison Executive Officer - Bridge
  • Colin Maitland as Seaman Jones - Bridge
  • Paul Tamarin as Seaman 2nd Class - Bridge
  • Frank Lieberman as Seaman 1st Class - Bridge
  • James Caffrey as Seaman 1st Class - Bridge
  • Burnell Tucker as Seaman 1st Class - Bridge
  • Mike Lennox as Lieutenant Krindlemeyer, U.S.N. - Bridge (as Michael Graham)
  • Bill Edwards as Lieutenant Hazelwood, U.S.N. - Bridge
  • Stephen Schreiber as Seaman 2nd Class - Bridge (as Stephen Van Schreiber)
  • Ronald Rubin as Seaman 1st Class - Bridge
  • Eugene Leonard as Seaman 2nd Class - Bridge
  • Gary Cockrell as Lieutenant Bascombe, U.S.N. - C.I.C.
  • Roy Stephens as Seaman 2nd Class - C.I.C.
  • George Roubicek as Lieutenant Berger, U.S.N. - C.I.C.
  • John McCarthy as Seaman 1st Class - C.I.C.
  • Shane Rimmer as Seaman 1st Class - C.I.C.
  • Glenn Beck as Seaman 2nd Class - C.I.C. (credited as Glen Beck)
  • Brian Davies as Lieutenant Beckman U.S.N. - Communications
  • Ed Bishop as Lieutenant Hacker U.S.N. - Communications (as Edward Bishop)
  • Paul Carson as Seaman 1st Class - Communications
  • Laurence Herder as Petty Officer - Communications
  • Phil Brown as Chief Hospitalman McKinley - Sick Bay
  • Donald Sutherland as Hospitalman Nerney - Sick Bay
  • Warren Stanhope as Hospitalman Strauss - Sick Bay

Production

Writing

The screenplay by James Poe follows the novel fairly closely but Poe wrote a different ending. In the novel, the Soviet submarine does not fire back at Bedford before being destroyed. The shocked Finlander then receives word of his promotion to admiral. Commodore Schrepke, realising that World War III will begin once the events are known, sabotages one of the remaining ASROCs and destroys the ship. Munceford, the sole survivor, is found by Novosibirsk, the submarine's mothership. Unlike the book, the film version ends with the vessels being destroyed by one another. The plot reflects several Cold War incidents between the NATO and Soviet navies, including one in 1957 when USS Gudgeon, a submarine, was caught in Soviet waters and chased out to sea by Soviet warships. Although none ended as catastrophically as the Bedford incident, the story illustrated many of the fears of the time.

Filming

The Bedford Incident was mostly filmed at Shepperton Studios in the UK, although some shots at sea were used. "USS Bedford" was a fictitious guided missile destroyer and the role of Bedford was mostly played by a large model of a Farragut-class destroyer. Interior scenes were filmed in the British Type 15 frigate HMS Troubridge; British military equipment can be seen in several shots, including a rack of Lee–Enfield rifles and Troubridge's novel, forward-sloping bridge windows. Sidney Poitier's initial flypast and landing from a Whirlwind helicopter were filmed aboard another Type 15 frigate, HMS Wakeful, whose F159 pennant number is clearly visible. The vessel portraying a Soviet intelligence ship has the name "Novo Sibursk", written on the hull at the bow in the Latin alphabet, not the Russian language's Cyrillic alphabet; "Novosibirsk" is a more accurate English rendering.

Analysis

The American historian Stephen Whitfield argued that The Bedford Incident was a rejoinder to The Caine Mutiny.[9] In the 1954 film The Caine Mutiny and even more so in the 1951 novel that it was adopted from, the incompetent, deranged Captain Philip Queeg whose actions provoked the eponymous mutiny, is ultimately portrayed as a victim of the snide, scheming intellectual Thomas Keefer whose ethos is fundamentally opposed to that of the U.S Navy.[10] The message of both versions of The Caine Mutiny was as Whitfield put it "...that losing a ship in a typhoon is better than challenging a skipper whose powers of command have failed".[11] Whitfield argued that by the 1960s popular mentalities had changed so much that more anti-militaristic films such as The Bedford Incident were being released.[11] Very much like Captain Queeg of the fictional destroyer USS Caine, Finlander is a career Navy officer in command of a destroyer who has "...lost touch with reality, largely because of the constant frustration and remorseless pressure of command".[9] In contrast to The Caine Mutiny which "...attempted to vindicate the necessity of obedience-even when that leadership is mentally unbalanced-The Bedford Incident, made without Navy co-operation, warns that such deranged authority could unleash nuclear war, which happens accidentally".[9]

Keefer, the resident intellectual abroad the Caine, starts out as the likeable voice of reason against the paranoid Captain Queeg, but is gradually revealed to be the most loathsome character in the story, being a cowardly, dishonest and selfish schemer who is admonished for his treatment of Queeg who is praised as an honorable, but misunderstood career Navy officer who was only patriotically serving his country.[12] It is revealed that Queeg was suffering from post-traumatic stress caused by his service as a destroyer captain on the harrowing "North Atlantic run", making Keefer who has never experienced combat all the more odious.[13] Ben Munceford, the journalist who serves as an analogous character to Keefer as the resident intellectual abroad the Bedford who like Keefer has a worldview that is essentially opposed to that of the Navy, but he is portrayed as a far more sympathetic and likeable character. Unlike Keefer, the writer who was reluctantly drafted into the U.S. Navy in World War Two, Munceford is a journalist, being the only civilian abroad the Bedford. The fact that Munceford is apparently the only black man abroad the Bedford illustrates his sense of isolation. However, both Keefer and Munceford have similar short term expectations of the Navy as Keefer is writing a novel abroad the Caine that he intends to publish after he is discharged from the Navy while Munceford is only on the Bedford to write a story about Finlander. Both Keefer and Munceford are intellectuals who are skeptical of authority figures and are always asking inconvenient questions. Keefer successfully undermines the leadership of Queeg and provokes the mutiny while Munceford is unsuccessful in challenging the leadership of Finlander, leading the latter to embark upon a course that leads to the deaths of everyone abroad the Bedford. Munceford comes to serve as the voice of reason against Finlander and in both the novel and even so in the film he is portrayed as quite justified in challenging Captain Finlander.[14] Whitfield argued that the different messages presented about the question of obeying authority and the portrayal of the military men and intellectuals in The Caine Mutiny vs. The Bedford Incident illustrated how much mentalities had changed from the 1950s to the 1960s.[9]

Widmark modelled the mannerisms and rhetorical style of Captain Finlander after Senator Barry Goldwater who was the Republican candidate for president in the 1964 election.[15] Goldwater had been attacked in the 1964 election as too hawkish, most notably in the infamous Daisy Girl television commercial which warned that Goldwater if elected president would start a nuclear war. The film's message-told via the story of Finlander who because of his obsessive anti-Communism and relentless determination to provoke a confrontation with a Soviet submarine that leads to the deaths of everyone abroad both the Bedford and the Novosibirsk-is that Cold Warriors such as Goldwater would had likewise provoked a nuclear war that would had been the end of humanity.[15] The film's message criticizing hawkish, confrontational Cold War policies reflected part of a backlash against militarism after the Cuban Missile Crisis almost caused a nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States in 1962.[15] The scholars Harold R. Troper and Michael J. Strada describe The Bedford Incident as one of series of 1960s films that were "full frontal assaults on military values".[16]

The Canadian historian Sean Maloney praised the book version of The Bedford Incident for its level of realism, writing that the book was "a microhistorical study of the Cold War itself" and as "the best literacy depiction of the Cold War".[17] Maloney noted that to enter the North Atlantic ocean from their bases on the Arctic ocean in Murmansk and Archangel, Soviet submarines had to cross what was called the "Greenland-Iceland-UK gap", making patrolling the gap a key concern for the U.S. Navy in the Cold War.[18] When Munceford arrives on the Bedford, the ship's executive officer (the number two man), Commander Allison, tells him that the ship operates "under virtually wartime conditions", a point further elaborated by Captain Finlander who says: "We are hunters-stalking kind of hunters-who track a foe who is also silently listening to us".[19] One Soviet nuclear ballistic submarine carried on average 12-16 ICBMs (Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles) armed with hydrogen bombs each capable of destroying an entire city. From Finlander's viewpoint, it is essential that he know the location of Soviet submarines because if World War Three should break out, he would have at most a matter of minutes to sink the submarine before it would fire its ICBMs that would take out 12-16 American cities.[20] Maloney noted that in the film version of The Bedford Incident that Finlander is portrayed as far more deranged than in the novel, arguing that Finlander's obsession with hunting Soviet submarines in the North Atlantic in the novel is "completely understandable and possibly even legitimate".[20] Maloney argued that should World War Three ever occur, it was crucial have as much intelligence as possible about the opponent in order to both strike hard as possible via nuclear strikes and to deny the opponent the ability to strike oneself as much as possible with their nuclear weapons.[21]

The fact that submarines are very difficult to find in the vastness of the ocean has imposed an almost unbearable psychological strain on Finlander. When Munceford presses for more information about what is going on and if anybody gets hurt, Finlander says: "Fear hurts. Unrelenting tension becomes a physical pain. Uncertainty and frustration can turn into a crippling agony. Here we clash in the privacy of the black, empty ocean with no audience, but our conscience; both parties want to keep it that way because the stakes are such that no compromise is possible. If you doubt me, then ask yourself what the United States has left if its DEW and NORAD systems are cracked?"[19] Finlander further underlines the stakes as he states: "We're not here making faces at the Commies over a wall. We're not here in a base area indoctrinating simple-minded peasants into the complex savagery of modern guerrilla tactics; we're not sitting in an air conditioned blockhouse in Florida trying to shoot a bigger hole in the Moon. Here we hunt the Russians. Here we have our enemy and more than accepting his challenge, go after him without any inhibitions of containment policies or technical inferiorities".[19] Maloney argued that the level of technical detail in the novel together with its picture of American naval officers on abroad a destroyer having to obsess over the location of Soviet submarines for every single minute of their patrol is the most authentic picture of the Cold War at sea ever portrayed.[19] Likewise, Finlander's final rant after the Bedford sinks the Novosibirsk reflects the frustration that many American naval officers felt with the Cold War as he says: "The Cold War! How can governments expect their military to guide their actions by such a blatantly sordid euphemism? Is there really such a thing possible as a half-war? Can one half-fight with deadly weapons? Did those Russian submariners half-threaten us? Are they now only half-dead down there? Should I only half-feared them when the crews of so many American ships and planes are totally dead as a result of Russian actions? Does it not all naturally culminate in the totality of death and destruction?...Look and see what the Cold War really is. The same as any war. Death".[22] When Finlander tries to justify sinking the Novosibrsk because "war is hell", Commodore Schrepke replies "a nuclear hell, Erik?", warning that his actions will set off a Third World War that will be the end of humanity.[22]

Maloney has argued that both the book and film versions of The Bedford Incident were inspired by the two actual incidents, the "hold-downs" (forced surfacing) of four Soviet submarines during the Cuban Missile crisis in 1962 and another incident in 1959 when an American destroyer staged a "hold-down" of a Soviet submarine off the coast of Greenland.[23] The author of The Bedford Incident, Mark Rascovich, had many contacts within the U.S Navy and seems to have learned of the two incidents, which inspired his book.[23] In the film, Munceford, talks about how Finlander forced a Soviet submarine to surface during "the Cuban deal".[23] In many ways, the film is similar to other submarines vs. destroyers films such as Run Silent, Run Deep and The Enemy Below, but unlike those it is set in peacetime while the nuclear component greatly raises the stakes.[24] Maloney wrote: "The Bedford Incident is remarkably accurate in its assumptions that Soviet submarines were equipped with nuclear torpedoes on a routine basis".[25] The Caine Mutiny is set in World War Two, but its picture of a destroyer commanded by an officer who has lost his mind greatly influenced several novelists in the Cold War who speculated about the possibility of a crazed naval officer trying to start World War Three either intentionally or by accident.[13] The South African novelist Antony Trew published in 1963 a bestselling novel, Two Hours To Darkness, about a fictional British nuclear ballistic submarine, HMS Retaliate, commanded by an officer, Captain Shadde, who like Captain Queeg is suffering from paranoia caused by undiagnosed post-traumatic stress, who is determined to fire his submarine's ICBMs at the Soviet Union.[26] Like in The Caine Mutiny and The Bedford Incident, the other officers aboard the Retaliate have to decide whatever to obey a mentally ill commanding officer or whatever to reject his authority.[13]

Another inspiration was the desire of General Douglas MacArthur, a megalomaniac of extreme right-wing views, to expand the Korean War in 1951 by using nuclear weapons against the People's Republic of China, if necessary in defiance of President Harry S. Truman.[27] MacArthur's very public defiance led President Truman to sack him in April 1951, stating that as president he had the final authority over whatever to use nuclear weapons and that he decided not to use nuclear weapons against China.[27] MacArthur's "no substitute for victory" arguments about using nuclear weapons against China and his thesis he was answerable only to God instead of the president inspired the fears of an "out of control" military leader determined to plunge the world into a nuclear war either by design or acting rashly.[27] Maloney further noted that many prominent American intellectuals such as Joseph Heller, Harry Harrison, James Jones, and Norman Mailer had been drafted into the military in World War Two and having been exposed first-hand to military life lashed out in the 1950s-1960s by writing novels that portrayed American military leaders as stupid and vicious.[27] A recurring theme of the writings of the American intelligentsia in the Cold War was the fear of a rogue officer who at very least was acting recklessly in exposing the world to the risk of a nuclear armageddon.[27]

Actual Cold War incident

In October 1962, shortly before the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviet submarine B-59 was pursued in the Atlantic Ocean by the U.S. Navy. When the Soviet vessel failed to surface, the destroyers began dropping training depth charges. Unlike in The Bedford Incident, the Americans were not aware that the B-59 was armed with a T-5 nuclear torpedo. The Soviet captain, believing that World War III might have started, wanted to launch the weapon but was over-ruled by his flotilla commander, Vasili Arkhipov, who, by coincidence, was using the boat as his command vessel. After an argument, it was agreed that the submarine would surface and await orders from Moscow. It was not until after the fall of the Soviet Union that the weapon's existence and how close the world came to nuclear conflict was made known.[28]

See also

Notes
  1. Specifically, they are in Greenland territorial waters at the entrance to the J.C. Jacobsen Fjord, which is due northwest from Iceland.

Books
  • Whitfield, Stephen (1996). The Culture of the Cold War. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 9780801851957.
  • Maloney, Sean M (2020). Deconstructing Dr. Strangelove: The Secret History of Nuclear War Films. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 164012351 Check |isbn= value: length (help).
  • Strada, Michael; Troper, Harold (1997). Friend Or Foe?: Russians in American Film and Foreign Policy, 1933-1991. Lanham: Scarecrow Press. ISBN 0810832453.

References
  1. Two online sources of the New York Times review:
  2. Fuller, Karla Rae. "The Bedford Incident (1965)". popmatters.com. Retrieved 26 February 2014.
  3. Freedman, Peter. "The Bedford Incident". radiotimes.com. Retrieved 26 February 2014.
  4. "The Bedford Incident". timeout.com. Retrieved 26 February 2014.
  5. Clark, Graeme. "Bedford Incident, The Review (1965)". thespinningimage.co.uk. Retrieved 26 February 2014.
  6. Feeney, F. X. (interviewing Harris, James B. ): "In the Trenches with Stanley Kubrick," Spring 2013, DGA Quarterly, Directors Guild of America, retrieved December 8, 2020
  7. Prime, Samuel B. (interviewing Harris, James B. ): "The Other Side of the Booth: A Profile of James B. Harris in Present Day Los Angeles," November 13, 2017, MUBI.com,retrieved December 8, 2020
  8. Freedman, Peter: review: The Bedford Incident, retrieved December 8, 2020
  9. Whitfield 1996, p. 217.
  10. Whitfield 1996, p. 61-62.
  11. Whitfield 1996, p. 61.
  12. Whitfield 1996, p. 62.
  13. Maloney 2020, p. 42.
  14. Maloney 2020, p. 316.
  15. Whitfield 1996, p. 217-218.
  16. Strada & Troper 1997, p. 112.
  17. Maloney 2020, p. 33.
  18. Maloney 2020, p. 33-34.
  19. Maloney 2020, p. 34.
  20. Maloney 2020, p. 35.
  21. Maloney 2020, p. 307.
  22. Maloney 2020, p. 38.
  23. Maloney 2020, p. 309.
  24. Maloney 2020, p. 308.
  25. Maloney 2020, p. 311.
  26. Maloney 2020, p. 41-42.
  27. Maloney 2020, p. 49.
  28. Noam Chomsky (2004). Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance. New York: Henry Holt. p. 74. ISBN 0-8050-7688-3.
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