Film Review: Battle of Britain, 1969

"Never ... was so much owed by so many to so few." Winston Churchill.

A fabulous vintage epic, jam packed with a who's who of British stars of the era - Laurence Olivier, Christopher Plummer, Kenneth More, Michael Caine, Ralph Richardson, Harry Andrews - that does a sterling job of portraying a truly momentous moment in our recent history.

Robert Shaw, Christopher Plummer and... is that Lovejoy? (Ian McShane)

Robert Shaw's 'Skipper' character is based on 'Sailor' Malan.

South African RAF ace Malan.

Of course, given the subject, there's a Brit-o-centric spin, and plenty of the large and stellar cast clearly enjoy hamming it up as plucky plummy RAF types. But for all the cant, propaganda and myth, and despite years of so-called revisionist tweaking regarding the 'facts' of history (as far as they can be known), this remains a hugely compelling story. And it's a story very well told, in this appropriately lengthy and suitably epic production.

Dowding (in wheelchair) visits the production at Duxford. [1]

This image touches a nostalgia nerve for me! [2]

Unlike 633 Squadron, or even Memphis Belle, despite the passing of the years, this has aged remarkably well (except for the ketchup blood!). I would love to have spent ages researching this superb film, and the massive amount of work that went into making it, but whilst doing picture research I found this excellent site, where a guy called Dave has done all the hard work already.

This excellent pic gives one a sense of the grand scale of the production.

Me 109s. Real, or models. Hard to say!

You can read plot précis elsewhere online. This post is really just a chance for me to say that this is a truly great film, which I always thoroughly enjoy watching. And it will bear repeated viewing. It's a shame there aren't more films made with this level of passionate attention to detail. And now, what with CGI, we're unlikely to see anything that goes to similar lengths to physically replicate the epic events depicted so well here.

A 'lobby card' for the movie. Very impressive!

Fabulous and fully functional flying large scale models were used in the production.

Another fab lobby card, showing aerial combat. Superb!

The Battle Of Britain belongs in the select and august company of The Longest Day, as a uniquely brilliant example of cinematic homage to key events of WWII. And in this review I'm simpy registering my vote for this as a solid-gold classic. 

UPDATE: 

It's been pointed out - quite right to - that I've been rather remiss in not making any reference to Susannah York. So, here she is:

In uniform...

under cover...

... and getting out of uniform, soon to be under the covers.

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NOTES:


[1] Visits to RAF Duxford, our 'local' Imperial War Museum and airshow venue, were a feature of my childhood, a tradition I've kept up into adulthood.

[2] I remember getting a postcard form a childhood friend with this picture on it.

Bubblegum trading cards.

A pal of mine has an almost complete set of old 'trading cards' on The Battle of Britain. I'm not sure if these were a movie tie-in or not. They're not mentioned amongst the 'merchandise' section of the Wikipedia entry on the film. I bought a few duplicates off my buddy. 

Dave's excellent site about the movie, already linked to above, also has a compete gallery of these cards (here), but only showing the fronts. A more complete exposition, showing both front and back (the reverse face of each card reproduces topical newspaper excerpts) can be found here.

Film Review: Battle Of The Bulge, 1965

NB - Another in my continuing series of archival posts. Drafted ages ago, but only finished now.

Hmm? I want this to be a good film, and I want to enjoy it. But it isn't, and I don't.

In terms of accuracy of any sort, it's pretty woeful. Only in the broadest of terms - the Germans luanched an offensive that ultimately failed - is it anywhere near the mark. Some of the detail chimes with certain events, such as the SS Malmedy prisoner massacre, and the German attempts to cause confusion behind the Allied lines (by using German troops disguised as Americans) [1]. It's obviously intended - as the original publicity materials, such as the poster below, make clear - to be a blockbuster in the mould of A Bridge Too Far, or The Longest Day. But those films worked much harder to achieve authenticity. And, particularly in comparison to this movie, they succeeded.

'Only Cinerama could give it to you the way it was.' If only! [2]

Col. Hessler (Robert Shaw) is introduced to wunderwaffen, the new Tiger. Eh? That's not a Tiger?

Hessler and his orderly, Conrad (Hans Christian Blech), singing the Panzerleied, with...

... the young tankers. [3]

It's also hard to watch a film in which not only is the history well off the mark, but the looks of the locations are wrong, and the materiél, in particular the tanks and vehicles of both sides, are wrong. Even the uniforms look too generic. They didn't have CGI back when this film was made, but then neither did the Russian makers of 'Osvobohzdenie' (Liberation), a truly epic five-part film about the counteroffensives on the Eastern Front that puts this lacklustre and innacurate drivel properly to shame. And the Russian's at least had the wherewithal to try to make some of their armour actually look like the Tiger tanks, or whatever else, they are standing in for.

An M3 masquerading as a German half-track.

M47 Patton tanks were used to stand in for Tigers. Poor image dubbing doesn't help.

There are a few films, Battleground, and parts of Band Of Brothers, for example, that cover aspects of the Battle of The Bulge, and do so far better than this movie does, but it remains a campaign ill served by western cinema. Sadly this film doesn't measure up to its own sense of self importance, which ends up making the rather portentous triple interludes - there are three bombastic musical segments, an overture, an intermission, and an exit - seem rather ridiculous. The stark red and black title graphics, as nice as they are, are scant consolation.

Telly Savalas as Guffy, an American tanker with a sideline in black market contraband.

Filmed in Spain, the landscape settings don't quite evoke the Ardennes.

In my view you'd have to be shamefully ignorant of the history of these important events to be taken in by this Hollywood gloss, which comes off more as a melodramatic Western, relocated to WWII, in terms of acting and drama. What a missed opportunity. And what a waste of plenty of decent acting talent.

This nice old poster makes the film look much better than it is. 

It's quite clear from the older posters that this was cast in the mould of star-studded epics such as The Longest Day, and A Bridge Too Far. It just goes to show that throwing big names into the pot with a turkey doesn't alter the fact it's a turkey.

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NOTES:

[1] This latter aspect, however, like so much of the history with which this film should've concerned itself, is grossly misrepresented, in this instance by being hugely overplayed.

[2] Introduced in the 1950s, Cinerama was an attempt by the cinemas to find new means of competing with TV, by offering a more spectacular immersive panoramic viewing experience. But by the time Battle of the Bulge was made it was already on the decline. And this film was shot in a single camera budget version of the format, where the original called for three cameras shooting simultaneously!

[3] This was one of the few scenes I actually enjoyed, as I felt it conveyed well the positive camaraderie aspect of the German war machine, something usually glossed over in big budget war films.