Jack Cohn persuaded his partners at Columbia to go head-to-head with the major studios in 1928 by making an A picture, Submarine, an adventure story suggested by two actual disasters involving Navy submarines. The biggest moneymaker in the young company's history, it was also a critical success, establishing Capra as a versatile and important director. “Frank R. Capra's direction is especially clever,” wrote Mordaunt Hall in the New York Times, “for not only has he attended to the action of the story, but he has also obtained from his players infinitely better characterization than one is apt to see on the screen, especially in a melodrama.” Submarine also was Columbia's, and Capra's, first tentative venture into sound (although here we screen a restored silent version). Capra was convinced that sound was “an enormous step forward. I wasn't at home in silent films; I thought it was very strange to stop and put a title on the screen and then come back to the action. . . . I don't think I could have gone very far in silent pictures-at least not so far as I did go with sound.”