Raoul Walsh's Sea Devils

The heroes of Walsh are sustained by nothing more than a feeling for adventure.
--Andrew Sarris

Raoul Walsh's Sea Devils (1953) is the last film made in the 3-strip technicolor format: as more and more films were being made in color the studios did not want to spend the money for this expensive process -- it used three negatives and therefore three times as much film -- even though the result was exquisite saturated color.  Walsh and his director of photography Wilkie Cooper used this process quite effectively, with brilliant reds, yellows and purples appropriate for a costume picture and subtle day-for-night location scenes.

The films stars Yvonne DeCarlo and Rock Hudson as English spies in the Channel Islands in 1800 and is based on Victor Hugo's Les travailleurs de la mer.  Some find it hard to appreciate Rock Hudson after all we have learned about him but he did many terrific pictures for directors such as Walsh, Howard Hawks  and, especially, Douglas Sirk (my own favorite is All That Heaven Allows, 1956) who knew how to use Hudson's impressive combination of toughness and vulnerability. Some may see beefcake competing with cheesecake in the two stars of Sea Devils but I find that Walsh has effectively captured the passion of a man and a woman united in adventure and believing both in a cause and in each other.