The Long Voyage Home

Ford’s episodic maritime drama, based on early works by Eugene O’Neill, follows a freighter bound from the West Indies to England bearing a cargo of ammunition during World War II. The comradely crew—including Thomas Mitchell as a pugnacious Irishman, Ian Hunter as an English alcoholic, and John Wayne as a sensitive Swede yearning for home—endures storms, strife, German bombs, and Cockney kidnappers. But the movie’s most compelling drama comes from the cinematography by Gregg Toland (who went on to shoot Citizen Kane), with its fathom-deep focus and highlights glinting like foam on the darkest of seas.