***
DVD Release
Under imminent threat from a
German invasion, the RAF double their efforts to defeat the enemy in the skies
over Britain.
Over-saturated with stars
(Lawrence Olivier, Christopher Plummer, Ian McShane, Michael Caine and Robert
Shaw, to name but a few), all vying for screen time and receiving an inadequate
amount, the film stumbles from explosion to explosion without any real plot.
The characters are indistinguishable from each other – there’s a man with a
white roll neck, there’s Christopher Plummer and his annoying relationship, and
two curly-haired men, one of whom does victory-rolls over the airfield, and
Michael Caine with his dog… and that’s about it. Oh, yes, there’s also Lawrence
Olivier sitting behind a desk… and Ian McShane not giving a damn when his
family gets bombed. The script is unreliable and wholly basic, although there
are a couple of amusing scenes involving communication breakdowns with the
newly recruited Polish flyers.
The saving grace of the film is
the dogfights, which left me wondering how on earth they were filmed. Today, of
course, much of this would be done through CGI, but in 1969, this was obviously
limited, so the exact dynamics of the shoots must have been incredibly
intricate. Once you get passed the very dated blood-effects (it literally looks
as though someone has tipped Ketchup everywhere), these scenes are very
engaging, and really highlight how disorientating it must have been in the tiny
cockpits, with ‘planes coming out of the sun. As someone who struggles with
flying as I fear crashing into the sea, some of the scenes were a little
difficult to watch! I suppose the film could be applauded for attempting to
show both the British and German perspective, with both sides being treated
pretty fairly, but the German fighter pilots are just as unknowable as the
British, although it is refreshing to see German being used instead of just
German accents.
An interesting watch if only for
the dogfights, Battle of Britain is
technically brilliant, but severely lacking with regards to character
development… or rather, any distinction between characters. Without any
particular main character to latch on to, the film remains emotionally empty
and I found it hard to engage with, instead trying to work out what other films
I’d seen the cast in. Historically accurate, I learnt a fair bit of history
that I had previously been unaware of, but the film rests too heavily upon the
fight scenes for it to be a true war classic.
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