La critique de Roger Ebert (suite)

 

The emphasis on one for all and all for one, coupled with the high value placed on discipline, adds up to a program designed to make good soldiers, and indeed the cruise seems at times a little like boot camp, with Bridges as drill instructor (a student with vertigo is forced to climb the rigging). Yet Bridges is a likable type who runs a fairly loose ship; he's the kind of skipper to whom a father might say, "I give you the boy. Give me back the man."

 

For Bridges, that includes turning a fairly blind eye to the boys' smoking (not all that common among 16-year-olds in 1960), drinking and whoring around in port (his wife matter-of-factly administers stabs of penicillin)

 

It also involves trust that the young sailors will learn and do their jobs. We sense that he is an expert seaman, although the movie is thin on details, so that in a crucial late scene we are not sure if it was Bridges or one of his young sailors who made the correct decision.

 

The movie has been directed by Ridley Scott,whose brother Tony's"Top Gun"(1986) provides a model: Assemble a group of young men, distribute good and bad qualities among them, and have them learn through hard lessons that it is best to stick together and follow orders.

 

Women play a secondary role (in this case, limited to the transmission and healing of venereal disease). The underlying orientation of the movie, common enough in the 1960s, is that boys grow up to be men who do neat things together and then go out on Saturday night looking for easy action.