The Frogmen

An underwater demolition team in the Pacific during the Second World War. Their commander has been killed and a new one is posted in. The men are grieving and do not want him; they make things hard for him deliberately. The missions go on all the same: clearing mines, scouting beaches, night dives. Trust can only be built on the job. Lloyd Bacon's film was made only a few years after the war and worked with real equipment, with the navy's cooperation. Richard Widmark plays the commander, with Dana Andrews and Robert Wagner among the team. The underwater sequences were striking for their time. The telling makes no speeches about heroism; the subject is a unit learning to trust one another.