Souls at Sea

Gary Cooper and George Raft, 1937, Paramount: the slave trade in 1842, a shipwreck, two men who save lives and cannot save the system. Henry Hathaway directed. Pre-Code leftovers in a Production Code picture. The Middle Passage as a prestige adventure. Cooper is the reformer; Raft is the mate. It is a sea film that wants to be about conscience and is about a studio spending money on water.