Here's a movie with a good foundation. I like the premise, about a group of fun-loving party animals aboard a tramp steamer during the war, and I like the cast that they put together to play this motley crew (particularly Thomas Mitchell, Barry Fitzgerald, and John Qualen). Frankly, any time a movie's about a minimal group of people in a claustrophobic setting, I'm in.
As a story, though, The Long Voyage Home didn't really grab me. I don't know if that's because it takes a little too long to get going or because it often lacks focus (either way, I'm concerned that the real reason is that I wasn't being patient enough), but I honestly only cared about these people when they were fighting for their lives on that soaking wet deck, or when one of them died.
Fortunately, this is among John Ford's moodiest movies, thanks almost entirely to Gregg Toland's proto-noir cinematography (you can see the hints at Citizen Kane every once in a while, and those are always the strongest moments), so, even if the narrative wasn't hooking me, the melancholic tones and the shadowy visual textures were.
Grade: B
P.S. A possible indicator that I wasn't at my most engaged: I didn't realize John Wayne was attempting an accent until the final twenty minutes.
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