Sink the Bismarck! (1960)

A depiction of a naval operation in World War II, summarized by the film's title.

Technically competent, yet slightly disagreeable war drama. The Nazi ship's commander is portrayed stereotypically as usual with Nazis, and much apart from the real person, according to some reports. The real allied commander was for mysterious reasons replaced by a fictional character with a different name. The allied strategy seems to boil down to amassing every resource at hand (including human lives, of course) to achieve a goal of overrated importance. The one thing that is perhaps worth noting is the "reverse metaphor" phenomenon (I came up with this expression, not knowing of any previously existing one). It consists of comparing the naval operation to a chess game. Actually, chess is a metaphor of war (like every game is a metaphor of some human activity), so one is reversing the metaphor when one says war is like chess. Possibly, the same applies to the sentence "gambling with human lives", which the protagonist rejects for "taking a calculated risk".

Rating: 35