Battle of Britain

Rating:
Summary: irresistable
Review: Although made as a tribute to the RAF and this episode in World War II history, it nonetheless followed the successful formula of Tora, Tora, Tora, by making the enemy human and reasonable. It captures the essential spirit of the contestants in this epic air battle. The fact it was done for real, before CGI effects were what they are today, is an asset. There is a reality about it, a versimillitude, that comes from actually using the real articles. It gives the film an authentic look and thus there is no temptation to monkey with history by flooding the skies with an exaggerated computer panoply of planes or having the aircraft demonstrate exciting but very unrealistic maneuvers.

Rating:
Summary: Great aerial combat sequences with even better cast
Review: Battle of Britain is a huge war epic along the lines of A Bridge too Far and The Longest Day. In the years before the United States entered WWII, England had to hold back Nazi Germany almost singlehandedly. After the disaster at Dunkirk, it looked like there was no stopping the Germans. All that remained was for the German Luftwaffe to weaken England to the point where a land invasion could take place allowing Hitler to take control of Great Britain. The only surviving hope for England was the RAF, Royal Air Force. Hopelessly outnumbered, 2500 German planes to 690 British planes, the RAF had to hold back the Luftwaffe in the skies above England. The movie tells the story, from both sides, of the British pilots and their efforts to stop Germany from complete domination of Western Europe. This movie has the best aerial combat sequences ever put on film. One particularly effective scene has the musical score playing over the silent dogfights between the RAF and the Luftwaffe. Battle of Britain is a great war movie, full of action that should not be missed.

Battle of Britain boasts an impressive cast full of notable British actors. The huge list includes, in alphabetical order, Harry Andrews, Michael Caine, Edward Fox, Trevor Howard, Curt Jurgens, Ian McShane, Kenneth More, Laurence Olivier, Nigel Patrick, Christopher Plummer, Michael Redgrave, Ralph Richardson, Robert Shaw, Patrick Wymark, and Susannah York. The ones that really stand out from the rest are Robert Shaw as a squadron leader trying to get his fighter squadron through the battle and Christopher Plummer as a fighter pilot trying to save his marriage. The DVD offers a great-looking widescreen presentation and the theatrical trailer. For a great war epic with a huge cast and great aerial combat footage, check out Battle of Britain!

Rating:
Summary: Good entertainment; Great history.
Review: This movie is the precise opposite of "Pearl Harbor" in that this film first and foremost focuses on the great conflict between Germany and Britain immediately following the fall of France. The personal stories of the various protagonists are definitely in the background, and frankly are tangential to the real purpose of the film, which is to tell the story of the air war over Britain against the Germans. No sappy love story is allowed to get in the way of this tale, or distract from it. For this reason the film represents pretty good history.

A lot of care and more than a few dollars/pounds went into this production, and it shows. The aerial battle scenes are excellent, the special effects are such that the viewer truly feels transported into 1940s England, besieged by Luftwaffe bombers and fighters, defended by the outnumbered RAF. This is a very well done film.

As noted above, there isn't much of a storyline here other than the Battle of Britain itself. None is needed.

Rating:
Summary: Battle of Britain DVD
Review: Hey, so what it is a weak plot--this is the flyboy's documentary of WW II Spitfire pilots vs. the Luftwaffe...
I picked up the DVD at the supermarket check-out counter and could not believe it has come down to this. A discount DVD of one of the great flying theatricals of all time! And flown by the guys who were in actual aerial combat with each other at the this historic crossroad. It is also surprising to see so many actors who were young then, and have become far more accomplished and famous since, in this early movie. I flew Huey's in the Mekong Delta and I am still awaiting filming of that aviation moment. My book, OUTLAWS IN VIETNAM, will have to suffice until then...! I am glad to possess this piece.

Rating:
Summary: Beware of the Hun in the sun
Review: Beware of the Hun in the sun. Those words are spoken by a British officer training young pilots in one of the opening scenes of the film. It refers to the practice of a fighter pilot swooping down on his enemy with the sun behind him to keep from being seen until it is too late to react.

Every war film buff should own a copy of this remarkable and memorable account of the short but signficant battle in the skies between Britain and Germany. The 1969 film is packed with more than a dozen well-known stars of the period, including Laurence Olivier, Michael Caine, and Susannah York. It's hard to believe it did not garner any Academy Awards.

Following the defeat of France and the British evacuation from Dunkirk from May 26 to June 4, 1940, the Germans launched wave after wave of attacks with their air armada of bombers and fighters on Britain. It was up to a small number of trained British pilots flying Hurricanes and Spitfires to hold back the Germans.

The film is full of visual eye candy consisting of spectacular dogfights and sweeping panoramas depicting the coast of England and France. The aerial combat high above the White Cliffs of Dover is something not soon forgotten.

The film opens with the British preparing to remove their remaining fighters from France to Britain. As one squadron prepares to evacuate, German fighters arrive flying below tree level to strafe the field and hasten their departure. Next, the scene changes and the camera pans across desolate dunes at Dunkirk where we see abandoned equipment and vehicles belonging to the British army.

The odds heavily favor the Germans, and it is only through incompetence that they fail to prevail in the battle. British Air Chief Marshall Sir Hugh Dowding (played in a low-key performance by Olivier), states early on that "[Radar] is vital, but it won't shoot down aircraft. Our young men will have to shoot their young men at a rate of four to one."

And they managed to do exactly that.

One of the common complaints about the film is that the German characters portrayed are flat and lack depth. While there is no doubt that the film favors the British story of the battle, I believe it portrays the Germans fairly. Ineed, it's hard to find a war film that tells both sides fairly and evenly without bias. Just about every war movie favors the version of one side of the combatants at the expense of the other.

The film has many great battle scenes, which move it along well and keep the tension taught. The film is memorable for the sound and cinematography in particular. You won't be disappointed.






Rating:
Summary: DVD Fun...
Review: For those who have nothing better to do with time, some of the advantages of a DVD ...

Pause in the scene where a Stuka is about to crash into a radar building, and single step, one frame at a time...You will be able to clearly see the nylon strings, and even the supporting stick that was used to propel the plastic model plane.

Pause in the scene where a person runs to take cover in a radar shelter, just as it is bombed. By looking for an abrupt change in the pattern of the billowing smoke in the background you can identify the frame where the camera was stopped so that he could make his exit before the explosives went off...

And with singles frames you can also catch the ejected shell casings flying through the air inside the gunner's turrent of the German bombers.

Turn on English subtitles. The people who wrote them knew nothing about the RAF and did not bother to have them reviewed by an expert, because in the subtitles RAF "Biggin" Hill is transcribed as Bacon as well as Big Wind, and RAF "Tangmere" is transcribed as Tang Bear!!!

What I want to know is where they got the minature Buckingham Palace???

Rating:
Summary: Ordinary people fighting in extraordinary circumstances
Review: It was certainly no small effort technically to make this highly memorable war film just 28-29 years after the event. "Battle of Britain" sees one of the most decisive battles of history from both the British and German perspectives.

Indeed, unlike other "dual-perspective" films like "The Bridge at Remagen" (1968), where the Germans apparently speak to each other in English (which had no basis in reality), the German scenes immerse the viewer in a 100 percent German-language environment, something which pleases a linguist and military aviation enthusiast like myself. (The same applies to "Tora! Tora! Tora!" (1970), where the Japanese actors speak only Japanese.) The only thing that has always rankled with me, however, is the utterly inaccurate English subtitles which sometimes hardly reflected what the German actors (including Goering lookalike, Hein Riess, playing - who else - Goering) were saying in their dialogues. Of course, if you don't speak German, that's no worry, and won't spoil your enjoyment of this thumpingly good movie.

One may shake one's head at the fact that one has to witness a seemingly troubled marriage between Colin and Maggie Harvey (Christopher Plummer and Susannah York) as a sub-plot. Yet the thoroughly anti-Nazi attitude of a firebrand squadron leader (Robert Shaw), who angrily tells an RAF police corporal to "give [a shot-down enemy bomber pilot] a b****y shovel" to fill in a bomb crater at Duxford airfield, conveys both the hatred he feels for the Germans in attacking his country and the strain he is under for having to go up several times a day to lead his very young pilots to face a numerically superior enemy air force - kudos to Shaw for a no-holds-barred performance.

Unlike "Reach For The Sky" (1956), this film does not follow one or several particular characters throughout, though they do re-occur. This is an effective way to show that people from all social backgrounds were united in a common cause - to prevent the Luftwaffe from destroying the RAF in a prelude to an invasion of Britain - and, to the film-makers' credit, also included scenes away from the air battle, such as firemen battling against the flames, a bomb disposal squad in London, and, memorably, Maggie's total shock at seeing the dead bodies of her fellow airwomen draped in tarpaulins after the air raid on Duxford.

The film also showed that these characters were human and had things on their mind other than trying to defeat the Germans - such as the aforementioned Harvey marriage and Sergeant-Pilot Andy's (a very young Ian McShane) shock at seeing his family killed in an air raid.

Overall, Fisz and Saltzman do an excellent job in presenting a film about ordinary people battling against an enemy in extraordinary circumstances, and they manage to have the (British) lion's share of the film, with high-ranking RAF officers like Park (Trevor Howard) and Dowding (Laurence Olivier) having little, yet significant, screen time.

This is a classic must-see for enthusiasts of military aviation.


Rating:
Summary: Wooden Characters & Dialogue Hurt Film!
Review: What can you do when your subject entails filming a very very limited number of original planes & mock-ups over & over again. Add to this a cast of very capable & some famous actors giving them wooden dialogue lines throughout. I would recommend Gregory Pecks film "12 O'Clock High" instead. Battle of Britian just does not hold up after 36 years!

Rating:
Summary: Unbeliavably tedious, one of the most boring movies ever!!
Review: This movie has zero entertainment value. You have only to admire the producers efforts in terms of obtaining real World War II equipment for the movie. But, as far as the screenplay goes, it's so utterly bad, so boring, so tedious (and I'm a big war movie fan!). Some people say the director tried to say it like "it really was". But here was no need to have that slow pace, that ridiculous dialogues, characters that disappear without a trace, love plots that goes absolutely nowhere, tension close to zero! If it was not for the aerial battle scenes, one would not notice that Britain was in real danger!!

Rating:
Summary: Great film, DVD screwed up at the very end
Review: I originally saw this in the theater (double-billed with "Bridge at Remagen" during the original release. I watched it again on VHS, and wore out the copy I bought. When the DVD hit, I eagerly bought it, watched it all the way through, then THEY SCREWED IT UP. MGM should be strafed for replacing that great original, inspirational finale music with something that sounds like Muzak! That one thing cost them a star in my rating.

Great flying scenes, tolerable subplots, and there is just something that grabs you in the sound of those Merlin engines . . !

This film was made with the assistance and advice not only of RAF veterans but Luftwaffe ace Adolf Galland (who is himself protrayed in the film), the legendary commander who actually told Goering "Give me a squadron of Spitfires!"

Overall, well worth buying.