It’s hard not to be seduced by the thought that Preminger’s rather disjointed WWII war epic, In Harm’s Way, could be summarized entirely in its final shot.  For Chris Fujiwara, “(t)he end of a Preminger shot often has a hallucinatory, fantastic power, as if the scene, suddenly vacated by the narrative, were exposed to the threat - constantly present in Preminger - of the insignificant…” (Senses of Cinema).  Inverting, for a moment, Fujiwara’s observations, I can only humorously note how, as a viewer, at times it was I who felt threatened by the film’s insignificance.  Or more precisely, I was left confused as to what Preminger was trying to say about war, women, masculinity, friendship and America.  It is not as though the film has no message – quite the contrary; its message is so loud, and so frequent as to entirely make strange its claims.  At over 2 1/2 hours long, it was as if he were deliberately trying to empty it of content, only to leave behind a gesture both more familiar and more alien.  Just as in repeating a phrase over and over again, one is left with a shell of sound, this sprawling narrative becomes increasingly loud, but vague as the film progresses.  Indeed, if In Harm’s Way could be condensed into a single utterance, it is resoundingly, “Rock”.  In casting John Wayne as Rockwell “Rock” Torrey, a formidable, brave, steadfast, and extremely macho navel captain, Preminger must surely have realized that he was making, in many regards, a Western.  While Wayne’s performance is actually quite subtle, he still delivers enough machismo to single handedly propel a whole fleet of American navel ships, romance a worldly and level-headed nurse (played by the lovely Patricia Neal), and win the respect of his estranged and uppity son.  The aging Wayne, who would only one year later die of lung cancer, is quite literally the rock upon which this turbulent narrative rests: Rock is home, Rock is America, Rock is John Wayne.  
In Harm’s Way is as American as the bomb and cowboys, but as a European émigré, Preminger’s direction feels both deliberate and disinterested all at once.  Here, I must commend him for depicting the Japanese as a shadowy, yet human enemy.  Sure there is the stereotype of the inscrutable Asian, but aside from a number of scenes in which we see the enemy ships slinking in formation amidst a backdrop of sinister music, and a purposeful inclusion of a Japanese mother who has lost her child at war, Preminger is surprisingly even-handed in his representation of the enemy.  Moreover, given the fact that America was, at the time of the film’s making, deploying troops in Vietnam, In Harm’s Way is celebratory of American might without being repulsively so.  Within the DNA of this piece, one can see a blueprint for today’s big budget Hollywood war extravaganzas; whether it is a matter of humbler special effects or ideological subtlety, however, Preminger’s film is both more simple in its delivery and more ambiguous – simple, in that it still harkens to values that can be advertised on a movie poster, and ambiguous in that it points toward the darker and more elusive nature of sexuality and war.  Indeed, the closing credits of the film communicate a kind of hallucinatory opus and summation of the film’s overall atmosphere.  Designed by Saul Bass, the final credit sequence is a hypnotic symphony of waves and bombs, the latter gradually emerging out of the former as the names of a star studded cast and crew move over the screen.  One cannot help but feel that Preminger and Bass have chosen to end the film with a shot of the beach, the site in which two of the three female co-stars suffer both death and rape, as a way for audiences to meditate on the dual nature of eros and thanathos.  Once emptied of the film’s at times jumbled and choppy narrative, this final shot offers a distillation of Preminger’s unique treatment of a rather generic storyline.