User Reviews

This expertly rendered potboiler stars Hobart Bosworth as a great diver who is approached by some con artists. They want him to front for a fake company recovering gold from wrecks. He refuses and they put pressure on him by vamping his son.

Everyone plays their parts well and this silent movie from 1920 is beautifully acted -- particularly well underplayed by Bosworth and con man George Webb -- and well shot. The outdoor scenes are shot on location, including the diving platforms and that adds a great deal to movies like this: a touch of realism that later, slicker Hollywood movies would lose.

Watch out for Gladys George, who spent the late thirties playing oversexed mature women (best in THE MALTESE FALCON) as a young, innocent ingénue.

"Below the Surface" (1920) stars Hobart Bosworth and Lloyd Hughes as father and son professional divers, Grace Darmond and George Webb as professional schemers and scammers, Gladys George as Hughes' best girl for the very first part of the film until she's undermined by Darmond, Edith Yorke as Bosworth's wife and Hughes' mother, and others who fill out the bill.

The story begins with Bosworth diving 55 fathoms (about 330 feet) to secure a stuck, sunken, submerged American submarine with 27 aboard, running out of oxygen; then having the craft raised, Bosworth saving the day. It's an exciting beginning, with almost cryptic signs of priggish character being simultaneously pinned to Bosworth and his family. The somewhat religious overtones that periodically interrupt the film are distracting IMHO. Directed by Irvin Willat, this beginning is in keeping with his exciting, if not somewhat lurid epic tales he'd directed before, such as "The Zeppelin's Last Raid", "The False Faces", and the previous year's "Behind the Door", all dealing with involvement with Germany during the course of WWI. "Below the Surface", another sea tale (Willat followed this with many others in the future), now takes place on an island off the East coast. Bosworth and Hughes are well respected as divers. When Bosworth makes news with his herculean recovery of the sunken submarine, he's approached by Webb and Darmond to dive for a decades sunken vessel with millions in gold aboard. The plan is to have them bring up a few pieces of gold, then sell shares before an expedition can actually occur, making them loads of instant cash, then quickly and quietly disappear. However, Bosworth refuses on the grounds it would be very foolish and no doubt unsafe to make such a dive. Meanwhile Hughes is falling for Darmond (whose intent it was for him to do so!), and he takes up the offer of diving. He even volunteers to marry Darmond! Bosworth has discovered the pair is married - not brother and sister as they'd claimed - by hiring a private detective. Hughes by this time has seemingly discarded his old flame, Gladys George, and fallen headlong into the trap. Will Bosworth save the day? Will the plot thicken? You bet!

This is a fun potboiler's potboiler. It has some dull moments and almost ridiculous plot points, but Willat gets us to the end, an ending which is wrapped up hurriedly and in a way that is almost too fast. Nevertheless, at only one hour the show was a good watch. Bosworth followed up the next year with "The Sea Lion", keeping his string of sea tales going. He's a good piece of lumber, an actor whose rugged manhood (and rather aged by now) plays okay, but for modern audiences may be just a tad too - yeah, just a tad too... I always enjoy watching him, but he'd not be my hero today; rather, a great father figure for a more slick hero. On the other hand, I can see why Hughes would fall for Darmond: she's a knockout. I like her more as a good girl ("The Hope Diamond Mystery"), but she certainly lights up the scenery even when she's bad. Hughes is just Hughes: he's always serviceable. I've got him in 22 of his 97 films he made until 1939. He had enough popularity to keep him in front of audiences for over twenty years.