The Battle of the River Plate (a.k.a. Pursuit of the Graf Spee in the United States) is a 1956 British war film in Technicolor and VistaVision by the writer-director-producer team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. The film stars John Gregson, Anthony Quayle, Bernard Lee and Peter Finch. It was distributed worldwide by Rank Film Distributors Ltd.
The film's storyline concerns the Battle of the River Plate, an early World War II naval engagement in 1939 between a Royal Navy force of three cruisers and the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee.
Plot
In the early months of the Second World War, Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine sends out merchant raiders to attack Allied shipping. The British Royal Navy responds with hunting groups whose mission is to stop these attacks. In time, the German battleship Admiral Graf Spee is discovered in the Atlantic, just off South America, by a trio of British cruisers. With its speed and destructive firepower, Graf Spee is a formidable menace. Nevertheless, the British go straight into attack, closing swiftly...