The Battle of the River Plate

Powell and Pressburger's final collaboration as The Archers was also, perhaps, their dullest. Certainly it's a pretty routine account of the British attempt to capture of the German battleship Graf Spee in Montevideo harbour in '39, even if it is sharply shot by Chris Challis and reasonably acted by a superior cast. Admittedly, the stiff-upper-lip factor is relatively low, and the Germans are not the ususal sadistic two-dimensional villains, but those in search of the baroque romanticism usually prevalent in the team's work will be sorely disappointed.