Cinema: Man the Pushbuttons!

The Bedford Incident. Assigned to track Soviet submarine movements in the North Atlantic, the destroyer U.S.S. Bedford is laden with detecting devices, rocket-booster torpedoes and predatory instincts. "A floating IBM machine," says Medico Martin Balsam, who wishes he were back in the Reserves. Bedford's crewmen look more like science majors than sea dogs. They don't play poker, they don't go on sick call. Furthermore, Balsam grumbles: "Can you picture any of these guys singing Anchors Aweighl"

Nonetheless, in Scenarist James Poe's gritty adaptation of the cold war thriller by Mark Rascovich, Bedford appears to be powered by superpatriotism. Captain Richard Widmark is a right-wing fanatic whose hot head simmers harmlessly ("It's a lot of work being a mean bastard") until his ship sights a Soviet sub prowling territorial waters off Greenland. The captain can scarcely restrain his thirst for the kill as he trails his prey, determined to force the snoopy sub to surface for air and identify itself. The clear thinking is done for the Good Guys by a former German U-boat commander (Eric Portman) on advisory duty, and by a Negro reporter-photographer (Sidney Poitier). The man to watch, though, is a jumpy young officer (James MacArthur) with all that ASROC firepower at his fingertips.

If there is a new way to ignite World War III, Producer-Director James B. Harris ignores it. Plowing steadily along in the wake of Dr. Strangelove and Fail Safe, his drama is sharpest in its seriocomic side-glances at counterespionage aboard ship. The best scene takes place in sick bay, where diagnosticians earnestly analyze a specimen of floating garbage to see if they can detect Red cabbage, a staple of Soviet submarines. In another cryptic comment on cold war manners, a Russian surface vessel passes to port, simultaneously dipping its colors and dumping refuse over the side. Such cogency is missing from the standard high-megaton finale. Obviously made without the full cooperation of any specific navy, Incident emerges at last as its own worst enemy—a timely sea saga that cannot resist turning a treat into a preachment.