Hell Below

The film follows the crew of an American submarine serving in the First World War. On leave in Italy, Lieutenant Tommy Knowlton falls in love with Jean Standish, who is both married and the daughter of his own commander. Once they are at sea the friction between the two officers becomes impossible to carry. Forced to dive to escape enemy planes, the commander leaves a sailor behind on deck, and that sailor is Tommy’s closest friend. What follows is a story in which anger, discipline and a private reckoning collide. The war is given not through victory but through the decisions taken inside a narrow steel hull. Robert Montgomery, Walter Huston and Jimmy Durante appear in Jack Conway’s hundred and one minute American production, completed in 1933.