#90 - Battle of Britain (finally)

NOTE TO MY READERS, THIS MOVIE FELL THROUGH THE CRACKS.  SORRY!
BACK – STORY: “Battle of Britain” was released in 1969 and was specifically meant to be a tribute to “the few”. The movie fits into the sub-genre of old-school all-star epics with vignettes supporting the main story line. It’s sisters are “The Longest Day” (1962) and “The Battle of the Bulge” (1965). In some ways it can be viewed as England’s response to those earlier films. It was directed by Guy Hamilton of “Goldfinger” fame. The screenplay is based on the book The Narrow Margin by Derek Wood and Derek Dempster. The book gives a traditional retelling of the Battle of Britain and thus the movie stands as the definitive film treatment of the battle. It is not a revisionist film.


The film was big budget and it shows. Not only did the producers round up most of the great British actors of the time, but they went to a lot of trouble and expense to round up military hardware appropriate for a 1940 air battle. They assembled 12 Spitfires and 3 Hurricanes to represent the Royal Air Force. The Spanish Air Force cooperated with 17 ME -109s, 32 Heinkels, and 2 Junker 52s. The total of around one hundred aircraft made the movie the 35th largest air force in the world at the time. During the filming, more bullets (in the form of blanks) were fired than in the actual Battle of Britain.

The movie has a very impressive list of technical advisers which included famous aces Adolf Galland and Robert Stanford Tuck. Several airfields that were part of the battle were used in the film. The scenes at RAF Fighter Command were filmed at the headquarters of Fighter Command. Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding's original office was used.

OPENING SCENE: We see refugees moving down a road in France in 1940. At an air base nearby, British pilots are informed that the Germans are just down the road. They hurriedly take off leaving the “lame duck” aircraft to be strafed by German fighters.

SUMMARY: Air Chief Marshal Dowding (Sir Laurence Olivier) decides that sending more aircraft into the meat-grinder of France would be waste of precious resources needed for the upcoming battle for control of the skies over England. The German ambassador visits his British equivalent in Switzerland and gives the typical “surrender and avoid destruction” ultimatum. The British diplomat keeps his upper lip stiff and responds with "We're not easily frightened. Also we know how hard it is for an army to cross the Channel — the last little corporal to try it came a cropper. So don't threaten or dictate to us until you're marching up Whitehall! ...and even then we won't listen!" This exchange establishes a theme of the movie: the bulldog British versus the hubris-filled Germans. These national characteristics are personified by Dowding and Goring in the film.


At a British air field one of our trio of Squadron Leaders, “Skipper” (Robert Shaw), is training a new pilot. He takes him up for a mock dogfight. When the rookie hears Shaw’s “takatakatakataka” in his headphones he knows he is dead. Another theme is established: England is in a race against time to get enough qualified pilots in the air to replace its losses.

real Heinkels

In the inevitable romantic subplot, we meet Squadron Leader Colin Harvey (Christopher Plummer) and his wife Maggie (the lovely, but acting-challenged Susannah York) who works in command and control. He wants her to leave her position and transfer with him to Scotland. She does not want to (being a patriotic feminist) and they part coldly. Unfortunately, this is not the last time we peak in on their relationship.

the airfield bombing

At a German briefing on their strategic situation, it is revealed that the RAF has to be destroyed before England can be successfully invaded. It is decided that the RAF will be destroyed on the ground. The first attacks are by Stukas on radar stations. Because the Spanish Air Force did not have any Stukas, radio-controlled models had to be used for this scene. Spitfires pounce on them and without exception the models blow up on cue. There is even a mid-air collision and a fake-looking dive into the ground. Luckily for the movie, the Germans quickly withdrew the Stuka from battle because of its status as a sitting duck. This means the rest of the movie will feature actual planes in combat. By the way, the Stukas are shown leveling off to drop their payloads which is inaccurate because they were dive-bombers and thus would have released during a 60-90 degree dive path.

Next, even though the radar stations have not been taken out of commission, the Germans shift their focus to the air fields. We witness one of those bombings with a series of impressive fireworks. “Skipper” scrambles during the raid, but in a strange screenplay decision, his unit sees little action other than a rookie getting lost and shot down.

The next scene is a jump of I don’t know how many days. One of the problems of the film is we are not told when the next scene is taking place. A related problem is the characters are not clearly identified. In the combat scenes, for instance, all the pilots look alike with their headgear. The scene is probably set on August 15 (Eagle Day). the official start of the all-out German effort. German Heinkels from Norway join in the assault thinking the RAF can’t be in two places at one time. They are wrong and suffer heavy losses in a nice scene that features shots from inside the bombers. The bombers are unescorted in the movie because the producers could not find any ME – 110s to be totally accurate.

In a move similar to “The Longest Day”, the movie switches back and forth to give the British and German command perspectives. The audience learns that there is a disagreement in British Fighter Command on how to deploy the fighter units. Dowding and Air Vice Marshal Park (Trevor Howard) favor using the fighters to defend the air bases and intercept bomber formations as quickly as they can be scrambled. This means smaller formations making contact with the German bombers. On the other hand, Air Vice Marshal Trafford Leigh-Mallory pushes the “big wing” tactic of attacking the bombers with large formations.

Leigh-Mallory: "It's better to shoot down fifty bombers after they hit their targets than ten before."

Park: "Remember that the targets are my airfields, Leigh-Mallory, and you're not getting fifty, you're not even getting ten!"

This debate is accurately depicted in the film, but there was no actual confrontation between Park and Leigh-Mallory as acted out.

Back to the smoochy stuff. Wake up girls! The Harveys meet in a hotel. They are still arguing, but do kiss. This is where their relationship is left at – unresolved and we don’t care! A bombing raid on London occurs because of an accidental dropping by a German bomber. Here the movie does a good job of teaching how a mistake by a wayward enemy bomber provokes Churchill to launch a raid on the lit-up-like-a Christmas-tree German capital (which the German pilot and co-pilot just so happen to be visiting). Goring had promised Hitler that if Berlin was ever bombed “his name would be Meier”, so he shifts the focus of the air campaign from destroying the RAF to fulfilling Hitler’s desire for revenge by terror bombing London. Goring visits his fighter command and is told by the cigar-chomping Major Falke (modeled after Galland) that what he needs is “a squadron of Spitfires” (an actual quote from Galland).

In an excellent scene, the Blitz comes to London. We get views from within and above the city. The city is on fire and the firefighters are doing their duty. A pilot Sgt. Andy (Ian McShane) returns home to find his family in a shelter. He goes off to help a trapped family and returns to find the shelter has been destroyed. Tragic, but effective. He keeps a stiff upper lip and returns to combat.

The Polish get their props as we see them going up for training and then disobeying orders to weigh into a German bomber unit. This is one of the few humorous moments in an otherwise somber film.

We are treated to several dogfights that are among the best in non-CGI war movie history. This includes a magnificent extended scene which is basically silent except for the score and some radio chatter. It appears the filmmakers decided the audience needed a break from the somewhat redundant dogfight scenes. Nice call. It is the best scene in the movie and most memorable.

FINAL SCENE: The Germans pull their invasion force back from the French ports. Dowding gazes at a clear sky. Churchill: “This is not the end; it is not even the beginning of the end, but it may be the end of the beginning”. Another version of the film uses the more appropriate: "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few".

RATINGS:

Action - 8

Acting - 7

Accuracy - 9

Realism - 7

Plot - 6

Overall - 7

WOULD CHICKS DIG IT? I doubt it. Other than the wimpy romantic subplot, this is pretty much a guy movie. I do not know very many women who are into air combat.

ACCURACY: “Battle of Britain” is a commendable attempt to pay homage to the RAF pilots and commanders who saved England during one of the darkest hours in its history. Anyone who knows little about the event and the participants will come out of the film with a basic knowledge of the battle. However, it helps if you already know some of the facts because in some instances the movie assumes you know the big picture already.

The chronology is accurate, but we are not clearly given an idea about the dates of events. It is hard to determine how much time has transpired between some scenes. For a movie that prides itself on having the German characters speak German, it seems odd that subtitles could not have been used to identify the various historical people and the dates of events.

I have a problem with the composite characters. Are you telling me there were not enough true to life participants to build a movie around? Why have a Major Falke when you could have Adolf Galland himself? Where is Robert Stanford Tuck? How about Douglas Bader?

The movie is justifiably famous for its air combat scenes. These are accurately depicted to the best of the film-makers ability. The aircraft are as close to the real thing as could be expected. The ME-109s look a little strange with their Spanish noses, but they are versions of the famous fighter plane. We do see more of the Spitfires than is warranted (Hurricanes did 60% of the heavy lifting in the battle), but this is due to the fact Hamilton had a lot more Spitfires to work with. Similarly, the movie has Spitfires and Hurricanes together in units going into combat, which is not actually the way the units fought.

CRITIQUE: “Battle of Britain” is a good movie, but probably does not deserve the fondness many war movie buffs have for it. As a tutorial, it does a fine job in informing about this important event in history. It is fair-minded and does not treat the Germans as evil and the British as saints. In fact, it is not even very patriotic, which is surprising considering it was made in England in the 30th anniversary of the beginning of WWII. It covers both strategy and tactics so you get the pilots perspective as well as what the commanders were thinking.

Some of the weaknesses are the unclear time-line and the cursory character development. The movie jumps around from character to character and even from the English to the Germans that you do not learn much about any one person. This, of course, is a common problem for movies like this. “The Longest Day” did a great job with its minor characters, but few other all-star epics have been able to pull it off. In this respect, BOB is closer to “Midway”. In fact, it even has a distracting romantic subplot like “Midway”. Unlike “Midway”, BOB makes better use of its cast. The heavy-weights (with the exception of Olivier) are put in officer rather than high command roles. This allows Shaw, Plummer, and Micheal Caine (Squadron Leader Canfield) to put their stamps on their roles. They are all effective.

The dogfights are spectacular, but tend to be repetitive as the movie goes along. The stand-out is the “silent” scene which is almost surreal. Interestingly, the score for this scene is from the original composer and differs from the more bombastic, patriotic music that backs the rest of the movie. Unfortunately, given the state of war movies in the Sixties, the bloodshed is not realistic. The deaths are basically your ketchup bottle exploding variety. Sometimes men are wounded by bullets that leave no holes where they would have had to penetrate the plane!

CONCLUSION: “Battle of Britain” is the best movie on its subject. It could have been better, but it could also have been much worse. The producers tried hard and deserve to be credited with a game effort. You can learn a lot from this movie and if you hate to read it’s the best tutorial you will get. However, I feel it is overrated at #90 or at least I can confidently say that some of the movies I have seen on this journey are better than BOB. For instance, “Tora! Tora! Tora!” is similar, yet superior to it. Tora’s air combat is just as good, if not better. It has no silly love story. It covers more of the “greatest hits” of its event and does it more clearly. It also balances the opposing sides’ views and screen-time better.