The Battle of The River Plate (film)

The Battle Of The River Plate (film)

The Battle of the River Plate is a 1956 British war film by director-writer team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, starring John Gregson, Anthony Quayle and Peter Finch. In the United States the film was retitled Pursuit of the Graf Spee.

The film portrays the Battle of the River Plate, a naval battle of 1939, between a Royal Navy force of three cruisers and the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee. Unlike many British war movies of its time, The Battle of the River Plate treats the German sailors as honourable opponents rather than as cardboard cut-out "Huns" and Nazis. This was a recurrent theme in Powell and Pressburger's films, such as The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp.