Souls at Sea

Fine human drama with scale and epic.
Cooper and Raft are well cast as buddies on the seas of the 1850s, fighting the slave trade. There's a sinking ship climax reminiscent of TITANIC on a small scale and a court drama where Cooper is accused of wanton murder in rescuing some but not all from the wreck. Impeccably restored black and white print and well directed with good solid performances. Oscar nommed for Art Direction, Score and Assistant Director.

Starring Gary Cooper
When a ship sailing for America catches fire and sinks, very few passengers survive. Michael Taylor (Gary Cooper) takes command of the only surviving lifeboat and makes some tough decisions to expell some of its occupants for survival. Once he is rescued, he is brought to trial for murdering the men he kicked out of the boat. Fortunately, the entire story is allowed to be told. Michael and his friend Powdah (George Raft) are in the slave ship business, although Michael has secret dealings with the authorities. His rival Stanley Tarryton (Henry Wilcoxon) is secretly involved in the trade although it is his job to abolish it. To complicate matters, Michael falls in love with Tarryton's sister Margaret (Frances Dee). They all end up together on the fatal ship to America.

Souls at Sea is based on real events, although the story has been made up to avoid making any accusations. The bulk of the story involves the rivalry between Michael and Stanley, the friendship between Powdah...

Excellent costume drama
Extremely nice print of the somewhat forgotten Cooper/Raft/Dee seafaring drama set in the 1850s.
As the tag informs us, it's licensed from Universal (holders of the Paramount library)to Eureka so
the quality is as good or better than other Universal/Paramounts of this vintage (1937. The fact it's not
available in US in this format says a great deal about what the majors are now thinking about some of their older
and less well-known films. But then,vintage film fans are getting used to trawling around Amazon.world sites to find
all sorts of US films from official studio sources popping up in England, Spain, Italy, Germany and Australia.
Henry Hathaway delivers his usual solid direction, and Gary Cooper and George Raft work surprisingly well together.
This was no Paramount B film, but an A production and comes highly recommended.

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