Finest Hour - The Battle of Britian

Rating:
Summary: Superb account of the human side of the Battle of Britain!
Review: I first heard about this when I visited the Imperial War Museum in London earlier this year. There I was able to meet several of the people interviewed in the book and film. There was a huge display about the "Finest Hour" because this is the 60th anniversary of the Battle of Britain and because the survivors are now getting very old and are "going West..." It was time to truly put on a grand finale!

And then BBC put together this film tribute. PBS has shown it here in the United States and there is a book also. Putting it simply: this is OUTSTANDING! You will be gripped from the very start and simply won't want to leave your video. This is what you seldom see on television but when you do...it leaves a lasting impression.

The film uses survivors..."ordinary blokes" as one will call himself, to tell the story of young men and women, thrust into a war that they themselves thought might be the end of the world as they knew it. Young men in their late teens, just out of flying training, suddenly thrust into an air battle that would decide the fate of their country! Young children sent overseas to a faraway land because of the fear they would be killed in the bombing of the cities...

And you learn of the horror, the fears, the pain, as well as the joy, exultation, and jubilation. You get it all in this documentary. All Americans should see this because unless you are British, or have spent a lot of time there, you really don't know how huge the impact of this time was on the English people.

Get this film! You will NOT be dissappointed!

Rating:
Summary: Finest Hour - Truth in the telling!
Review: I first heard about this when I visited the Imperial War Museum in London earlier this year. There I was able to meet several of the people interviewed in the book and film. There was a huge display about the "Finest Hour" because this is the 60th anniversary of the Battle of Britain and because the survivors are now getting very old and are "going West..." It was time to truly put on a grand finale!

And then BBC put together this film tribute. PBS has shown it here in the United States and there is a book also. Putting it simply: this is OUTSTANDING! You will be gripped from the very start and simply won't want to leave your video. This is what you seldom see on television but when you do...it leaves a lasting impression.

The film uses survivors..."ordinary blokes" as one will call himself, to tell the story of young men and women, thrust into a war that they themselves thought might be the end of the world as they knew it. Young men in their late teens, just out of flying training, suddenly thrust into an air battle that would decide the fate of their country! Young children sent overseas to a faraway land because of the fear they would be killed in the bombing of the cities...

And you learn of the horror, the fears, the pain, as well as the joy, exultation, and jubilation. You get it all in this documentary. All Americans should see this because unless you are British, or have spent a lot of time there, you really don't know how huge the impact of this time was on the English people.

Get this film! You will NOT be dissappointed!

Rating:
Summary: God in a cup of tea
Review: Like Ken Burns' haunting "The Civil War", "Finest Hour: The Battle of Britain" (not to be confused with many other "Finest Hour" productions) is the last word in documentary magic. Arguably no other society since the Spartans has shown the raw, hanging-by-the-fingernails courage that the British summoned to hold out against the Nazi war machine. Narrated by the great Will Lyman, this documentary's strength lies in the personal accounts of profoundly British individuals who survived staggering hardship, and went on to enjoy their four o'clock tea; and in its standard-raising, professional quality.

Like all great documentaries, this production leaves the viewer with a profound sense of history as an aggregate of individual acts of courage, eccentricity, and occasionally just plain opportunism - all of which lead to Churchill's "broad, sunlit uplands" of the mind and spirit.

Rating:
Summary: Superb account of the human side of the Battle of Britain!
Review: This documentary goes really deep into the feelings and thoughts of actual World War II survivors - Spitfire and Hurricane fighter plane pilots, Royal Navy members who survived Nazi U-boat attacks and floated in the middle of the Atlantic for days before being rescued, two girls whose ocean liner was sunk-again by a U-boat and who also were rescued; Churchill's secretary, women who worked in the RAF control/war room. The images of the battle are truly amazing, and are interspersed with scenes where dramatization of actual events was done, so you'll see B&W battle footage mixed with colour dramatizations but the latter does not in any way take away from the "realism" or detract from the facts.

The strongest part of these series are the interviews with British war veterans, both men and women, as well as with some Americans (like a prominent journalist who wrote about the War to the U.S. public with wonderful detail and humanity). You almost feel like you're there and have met these people. The account of Sir Winston Churchill's amazingly strong and relentless character is quite an eye-opener for it was precisely his strength of character which suited him as the perfect candidate as a "war-time leader" after the rather idealistic and passive (some might say Pacifist) Neville Chamberland (who would have probably made a good "peace-time leader").

The quality of the footage is again very good and the narration excellent - with much power and emotion. The interviewees sometimes have very heavy British or Scotch accents, making them hard to understand, but this is only a minor issue in an otherwise charged and concentrated account of one of the most important battles in history which saw the British stand up, all alone, against an unspeakably formidable Nazi monster, while the people were dancing and singing and playing baseball in the United States, thinking that this was a "European" war... Only after the British stood up and defeated or held back the Nazis, and only after the American press and Franklin Delano Roosevelt managed to convince congress to help, did the U.S.A finally bothered lifting a finger to help out...

A must see if you are a WWII enthusiast and want to see the emotional and human side of the Battle Of Britain, as opposed to the cold hard facts you would read in a history book.