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Absolutely Fantastic

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Very Kubrick in its mass of men making their movements with grand machinery in a quiet, meaningful way. You can see 2001 and Strangelove in it. But I like all those post-war shorts, so I'm already prejudiced (and I do love early Kubrick.)

This is one of Stanley Kubrick's very early directorial efforts and is really only worth watching to compare certain aspects to his later works. It's basically a promotional film for the seafarers' union and it depicts all the reasons why you really would like to join this close-knit community. For example the membership allows you to enter the different headquarters and play pool, cards or board-games with your fellow union members. It also plays the family card with a couple shots of the harmonic American family with children, one right before the end, so you see how ISU members won't have to worry about those they leave behind. All kinds of benefits (maternity etc.) make sure of that.I wonder, will they also make connections to girls for the single seafarers? I heard they have a different girl in every port waiting. Oh well, in any case, even if the seafarer's union still exists today, I wouldn't recommend this one to anybody except seafarers and Kubrick completionists. It even has some parts which could have served as fodder for MST3K without the big name attached to it.

Struggling filmmaker Stanley Kubrick ("Fear and Desire" & "Flying Padre") follows the failure of his feature debut with this promotional film for the Seafarers International Union in order to recoup some of the losses and raise funds for his sophomore feature.The film, supervised by the staff of union magazine "The Seafarers Log", the promotes the work of the Seafarers International Union Atlantic and Gulf District with shots of the hiring hall, the canteen, the bar, the print shop and a union meeting at their New York head quarters.Secretary-Treasurer of the SIU Atlantic and Gulf District Paul Hall emerges from the ranks with a powerful speech extolling the virtues of the union which are all meticulously illustrated to the dulcet tones of news reader Don Hollenbeck who also bookends the membership-drive.The future filmmaking legend may be only in it for the money but he nonetheless allows a few flourishes in his colour debut, such as the extended, sideways-dolly shot of the canteen, and the film provides a curious insight into a union in its heyday."Call it a dream fulfilled."

Even if the short documentary the Seafarers did not bare the name of the late-great Stanley Kubrick, the subject matter would not be totally lost on me. It's a union film, educating the viewer on what makes up the seafarers, the men who make up the jobs of the sea, shipping, manning the ships, etc, and all apart of a bond that is almost communal in a way. But that it is directed by Kubrick, and that it is his first film in color with him in practical total control, it's hard not to see his mark on the project. In fact, I would argue for those who have seen the film, or for those who might want to either as a fan of the filmmaker or if by some off-off handed chance with the subjects, that it contains the height of the twenty-something Kubrick's trademark styles. There is an assured hand in photographing these subjects, and this time around, unlike in Day of the Fight and Flying Padre, it is not really at all dramatized documentary film-making (i.e. there aren't the staged scenes), even if it is in its own way a king of long advertisement of sorts for them.But if one is to look just on the technical side of things, it can put a smile on the face of a Kubrick fan to see some of the early techniques on display. Examples I would include would be his tracking of the camera, this kind of panning across a room that one might find in the Shining or Paths of Glory, which is used in effect in showing the seafarers eating in the cafeteria. This puts his mark on the material right away though there are other shots before this with certain Kubrick-type compositions; a standard photographer might just gets individual shots, dissolve in the cuts, and make it shorter. But there's an attention to these people that the director/photographer here wants to get across, and it's also in the compositions, like certain close-ups of machines (big and small), and just shots of the people in the rooms and the panning across the skylines and ships that seems different somehow from how another eye-for-hire would do it.It's not to say that this is any kind of rewarding piece of art that should be screened alongside the director's other major works. It's made for a very specific purpose and audience, and is not made to reach into any specific character presented in it (the exception being the leader of the seafarers Don Holdenbeck). But through using the color film stock available, and having no one looking over his shoulder telling him how to do it, Kubrick's work here, much like a very good student film, calls out for what's possible ahead.