- For the novel by Gary Paulsen, see Murphy's War (novel)
Murphy's War is a 1971 war film starring Peter O'Toole. It was directed by Peter Yates.
Plot
It is the closing days of World War II and Irishman Murphy is the sole survivor of the crew of a merchant ship, Mount Kyle, which has been sunk by a German U-Boat, which then machine-gunned the survivors in the water. Murphy makes it ashore (to a missionary settlement on the Orinoco in Venezuela) where he is treated by a pacifist Quaker doctor.
When he discovers the U-Boat is hiding further up river, under the cover of the jungle, he sets about obsessively plotting his revenge to sink it by any means, including using the Grumman J2F Duck (a floatplane) from the Mount Kyle. The floatplane had been recovered, the wounded pilot later being shot dead in his hospital bed by the U-boat captain, in order to preserve the secret of its location and, presumably, its action in shooting survivors in the water.
Murphy learns how to fly the plane in the most daring way, getting it out on the choppy waters of the river and discovering how the controls work by trial and error. This extensive flying scene involves lots of shots of the floatplane veering sharply to avoid buildings, the jungle and stalling.
Murphy soon finds the U-boat's hiding place and attempts to bomb it using home-made molotov cocktail bombs, an attempt which fails. Enraged he then attempts to ram the U-boat with a floating crane owned by the friendly Frenchman Louis. This also fails as the U-boat dives under him. However, the U-boat dives too hard and becomes stuck in a mud bank. Murphy uses the crane to recover a torpedo fired earlier from the U-boat and drops it on the trapped crew. However, Murphy is also doomed; the explosion causes the crane jib to pin him to the deck as the floating crane sinks.
Equipment
The U-boat was played by a Venezuelan submarine, the former USS Tilefish. The floating crane was a former World War II tank landing craft. The Grumman OA-12 Duck aeroplane used in this film has been restored and is on display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio.[1]
Production notes
As well as filming in the regions of the Orinoco River in Venezuela, there was a stint of location filming in Malta for scenes depicting the burning of the merchant ship , after it has been torpedoed by the U-boat. For these particular scenes O'Toole was called upon to swim through water afire with oil and with explosives going off right and left of him. "I used to do all my own stunts when I first started" he said. "I made it a principle. Everything in Lawrence of Arabia I did myself. But after suffering a paralysed hand, a bad back, broken ankle and countless knocks, I decided never again. It was stupid. Films employ stunt men. They can do these things far better than I . I refused to do any more stunts. [Then] I thought, well, just one more time. So I talked myself into it. In Venezuela I even fly a seaplane. If you want to see a picture of sheer terror have a look at the shots of me when I first fly that seaplane. " For that sequence a camera was strapped to the wing of the aircraft. [2] The director, Peter Yates, said he was particularly interested in "the way in which three people - Murphy, a doctor and a Frenchman left in the backwash of war - are really brought together by circumstance and how each character plays on the other and makes them do things that they wish they hadn't and things they sometimes feel proud of. " Filming began on February 23 , 1970, and was completed in Malta on July 5.
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