Absolutely Fantastic

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

Although Gary Cooper doesn't appear on screen for the first ten minutes or so, this movie is clearly his. Charlton Heston is billed second, and while his part is substantial, Cooper ultimately gets the meat of the movie. It's downright striking when Cooper, as Patch, first appears. This sea-wary captain looks nothing like the dapper romantic lead we associate with Cooper. He's grizzled, tired and dirty from head to toe. Cooper never got his universally-praised swan song moment before he passed, mainly because critics at the time panned a wonderful little movie called Love in the Afternoon based solely upon the age difference between Cooper and Audrey Hepburn.You may not even notice, but there's very little dialog for the first forty minutes of this movie. There's such an eerie feeling, and so much going on visually, that dialog isn't even necessary. The special effects are stunning in this film. Everything in this picture, unlike contemporary movies, looks utterly believable. The beginning in particular has a few breathless sequences which certainly stand the test of time visually.This picture is directed very capably by Michael Anderson; it nearly became an Alfred Hitchcock production before Hitchcock decided to make a little film called North by Northwest instead. No matter, Anderson, of Logan's Run and Around the World in Eighty Days fame, does a fine job at the helm. Heston plays his part, Sands, very well; free of the grandness and scope that people usually peg him for from the epics. Richard Harris also takes the villain role which could have easily come off as silly and made it dangerous and creepy.I give this movie a 9 because I think the script could have used a couple lighter moments between Cooper and Heston. The ending scene, while a little short, was especially well-done. It takes on added emotional weight by the fact that this film would be Cooper's second to last. Watch this movie for Heston. Watch it for Harris. Watch it to see the pairing of two heavyweights in Cooper and Heston, but especially watch it for Cooper.

The Wreck of the Mary Deare, is an exciting piece of cinema. Although not a masterpiece and it was clear no Oscars were going to be won here, we are with all presented with a classic yarn that has a montage of rich ingredients.The first forty minutes of the film is pure unadulterated peril on the high seas as salvage man John Sands (Charlton Heston) boards the apparently derelict "Mary Deare" during a massive storm in the English Channel.On investigation Sands finds that part of the ship has been burnt out and gutted and the entire crew have abandoned ship. Just as Sands is about to take his new prize in tow, Acting Captain Gideon Patch (Gary Cooper) appears, the one crew member to stay behind, put out the fires and fight the "Mary Deare" through the rough seas to safety.However it becomes clear to Sands, that reaching port is the last thing on Patch's mind as he purposely steers and beaches the ship onto the Minquieries, a plateau of deadly rocks - "a ships graveyard" Patch assures the confused Sands that this self destruction of his ship was done for a specific reason and begs Sands not to give away her final position until an official court of enquiry.Sands and Patch are eventually picked up and are met on shore by a gaggle of police and maritime insurance agents desperate to know the final fate of the "Mary Deare" and a rescued crew with an altogether different version of events of the one that Patch himself tells.Sly second Officer Higgins, brilliantly portrayed by the great Richard Harris tells of Patch's poor seamanship since assuming command and his panic at the fire and the rushed decision to abandon ship which has caused the death of so many of the crew.Sands then questions whether he has 'backed the right horse' especially as Captain Patch already has a reputation for 'losing ships' in the past. However he stays true to his word and fails to divulge the valuable information he holds on the final resting place of the "Mary Deare" There follows a maritime court of enquiry where after days of restraint, Patch is able to speak his piece and put the cat amongst the pigeons. Patchs testimony tells of how the ships fire and the evacuation was orchestrated by the "Mary Deares" owners and carried out by Higgins and other unscrupulous members of the crew, so that they can claim not only against the loss of the ship but also it's valuable cargo. However Patch is convinced and can provide the necessary evidence to prove that the real cargo had already been offloaded at Rangoon and replaced with crates of stone.This evidence is the substituted cargo itself, now secured in number three hold of the "Mary Deare". This he explains is why he beached the ship on The Minquieries, so she will lie in shallow enough water for the hold and the aforementioned crates to be officially examined thereby proving the deception. But when his calls for an official examination fall on deaf ears he and Sands take matters into their own hands and venture out to the "Mary Deare" to supply the said evidence themselves.Also Minquieries bound is the desperate Higgins, under orders from the the equally desperate owners to finally sink the tell-tale ship and silence Patch forever into the bargain.Can Sands and Patch prove the truth before Higgins and Co, or the ships final plummet into the murky depths take their lives? With notable support from Micheal Redgrave, Alexander Knox and Virginia McKenna, it is really an exciting couple of hours worth of cinema. From the high sea adventure through the courtroom drama to the typical finale of the good guys meeting the bad guys, The Wreck of the Mary Deare stands up as a good old fashioned ripping yarn.

I realize that great special effects shouldn't make or break a movie, and they don't here, but they ARE really terrific. The shipwreck scenes in the beginning of the film are not only great for 1958, they're great by today's standards too. I'd love to see a making of documentary. I'm so bored with the special effects "making of" docs of today. It's always that everything was first shot against a green screen, and then come the interviews with the SPX guys telling you what they did and how hard it was to do. "Yep, we just programmed the computer and went for coffee while it rendered the action". Yeah, really impressive. No computer here. This is the true essence of what used to be a CRAFT. Albeit scaled down, everything you see here on the screen actually existed in real life and not in cyberspace. I don't know if anyone will ever read this, or even care to compare, but watch the similar ship scenes in the newer version of King Kong and then compare them to what was done here almost 50 years sooner. IMHO, the scenes in the 2005 "King Kong" look more like a very realistic cartoon! Same thing with this years "Flyboys". The dogfights had a lot of great "camera" angles and thrilling sequences, but nowhere near as thrilling as done almost 80 years before for "Wings". And besides, that cartoon look clashes with the live action stuff. Yes, NOT using a computer WOULD have made things harder for the "Flyboys" and "Kong" crews, but if they're really any good they would have come up with better results! That's why the director of "The Fugitive" crashed a REAL train for the film rather than stoke up the computer chips. You really want real, you have to have real in there someplace! I really think that the film industry has it backwards. Huge budget films should spend all that money on the harder to do but more satisfying "hand crafted" SFX and leave the computer generated junk for the low budget flicks.

The Wreck of the Mary Deare was the next to last film of Gary Cooper and it pairs him with Charlton Heston who was fresh off his Oscar from Ben-Hur. Between the two of them they were the heroes of six sound Cecil B. DeMille films. And this film does have some special effects old C.B. DeMille might have enjoyed.Salvage tug captain Charlton Heston based in the UK comes across an abandoned freighter named the Mary Deare. Only Gary Cooper, sporting a head injury, and acting very mysterious is on the vessel. When raging seas prevent Heston from reboarding his ship, Cooper saves his life by hauling Heston on board when he can't hold on to the rope.In the meantime Cooper completes his objective which was to beach the ship on a series of jagged rocks in the English Channel named the Minquieries. He's doing this because he suspects skullduggery from the crew and the late captain of the Mary Deare.Americans Cooper and Heston are given good support by a cast of players from the UK such as Emlyn Williams, Michael Redgrave, Alexander Knox, and Mary Ure. The villain of the piece is second officer Richard Harris in one of his early and acclaimed parts before he became a star.The Minquiries have a lot of legend about them. They are the top of an Atlantic based plateau. None of them are big enough to rate being called an island. Smugglers and pirates in centuries passed piled many a ship on them and looted the contents. Today the only thing on them are small fishing huts. They are a well known hazard to navigation.The scenes involving the wrecking and salvage of the ship are well done. Many years ago I saw a picture of MGM's special effects man Buddy Gillespie inside the tank with the model of the Mary Deare. It was an interesting insight into the special effects game on the high seas.Fans of both Cooper and Heston will like this film. I suspect C.B. DeMille regretted not having a chance to direct his two favorite leading men in a joint project.