Destination Tokyo

Delmer Daves made his directing debut with the film generally treated as the grandfather of the submarine picture. Cary Grant commands the USS Copperfin, which collects a meteorologist and runs to the coast of Japan to gather weather data for the Doolittle Raid. John Garfield, Alan Hale and John Ridgely fill out the crew. Daves wrote the screenplay with Albert Maltz, before Maltz was blacklisted, working from a story by Steve Fisher, a former submariner. The technical detail was accurate enough that the Navy used the production itself as a training aid. The film was nominated for the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. Made two years after Pearl Harbor, it carries a heavy propaganda load, and its handling of the Japanese is hard to watch now. But the grammar of confined-space tension, the sonar ping and the waiting, was assembled here, and everything from Run Silent, Run Deep to Das Boot inherited the template. Who it is for: viewers curious about the classic submarine thriller and wartime Hollywood craft. Who it is not for: anyone who will be disturbed by the racist language of the era's depiction of the enemy.