The Commander (2023) on Netflix
In the early years of World War II, Salvatore Todaro commands the Italian submarine Cappellini. When his crew sinks a Belgian merchant ship, he decides to rescue its survivors.
- Netflix2.7/5
- IMDb6.5/102,206 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes41%
Trailer
Plot summary
Salvatore Todaro is a Royal Italian Navy officer in command of the newly commissioned submarine Cappellini. A back injury from an accident had ended his active service, but he refuses a quiet life ashore, to his wife's dismay, and gives each of his men a dagger for close combat. On 16 October 1940, in the Atlantic, the Cappellini attacks the Belgian steamer Kabalo, which had fired on it. After the sinking, Todaro goes against his superiors' orders and takes aboard 26 Belgian survivors found in lifeboats far from any coast. There is no room for them below, so the submarine must travel on the surface for days, where enemy forces can see it, and some of the rescued men must stay on top of the hull. Todaro means to bring them to neutral Santa Maria in the Azores.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Commander (2023)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- With no schematics or interior photographs of Italian submarines of the era, production designer Carmine Guarino built a 3D model and worked with mechanical engineer Nicola Ferrari, whose strut system let the full-scale replica float in the Ferrati Naval Basin at the Taranto Naval Arsenal and then navigate at sea.
- The submarine's interiors were rebuilt at Cinecittà World on the U-boat replica made for U-571 (2000), while the hull was built in Taranto over eight months; the replica weighed over 70 tons, measured 73 meters and involved more than 100 engineers, builders and artisans.
- Director Edoardo De Angelis got interested in the story after a 2018 speech by Admiral Giovanni Pettorino marking the Italian Coast Guard's 153rd anniversary, in which Pettorino held up Todaro as an example against the Conte I government's policy on NGOs and the migrant crisis.
- In the film a second officer plays the submariners' anthem over the intercom during the Cappellini's first mission in 1940, but the anthem was not created until 1941, after a competition organized by the Opera Nazionale del Dopolavoro, so it could not have been played then.
