The Battle of Britain (1969)

DIRECTOR: Guy Hamilton

CAST:

Christopher Plummer, Susannah York, Robert Shaw, Michael Caine, Ian McShane, Trevor Howard, Michael Redgrave, Sir Laurence Olivier, Kenneth More, Ralph Richardson, Patrick Wymark, Edward Fox, Curt Jürgens, Karl-Otto Alberty, Manfred Reddemann, Alexander Allerson, Harry Andrews, Michael Bates, Hein Reiss, Rolf Stiefel

REVIEW:

This British-German co-production from director Guy Hamilton was intended as an epic war classic paying tribute to the courageous pilots of the Battle of Britain, but is unfortunately a largely muddled production boasting the usual large all-star cast and some excellently choreographed air battle sequences but lacking much in the way of focus, clarity, storyline, or human interest.
1940: The British Royal Air Force is run out of Europe by the conquering German Army. The situation is grim, but the Germans halt at the beaches to prepare for their offensive against Britain. Left to stand alone against the German juggernaut, the British struggle desperately to hold off the powerful Luftwaffe and maintain air supremacy over the English Channel. If the British can achieve this, the Germans will not be able to make any further advances on the island nation. If they are defeated, the path will be cleared for a German invasion. The odds are stacked against the British: as Air Chief Marshal Dowding (Sir Laurence Olivier) grimly notes: “our young men will have to shoot down their young men at a rate of four to one if we’re to keep pace at all“.

As always with such a large cast of characters, each has scant overall screentime and limited opportunity to make an individual impression. About as central to the storyline as anyone are Squadron Leader Harvey (Christopher Plummer) and his wife (Susannah York), who unfortunately are not very interesting. Their story is bland soap-opera and after taking up more than its share of screentime, it is abruptly dropped and neither character is seen or mentioned again. Robert Shaw fares somewhat better, bringing a little of his usual gusto to the hard-nosed Squadron Leader Skipper, loosely based on real-life South African ace Adolph Malan, who volunteered to fight for the British, and Air Marshals Dowding and Park are well-played by Sir Laurence Olivier and Trevor Howard as pragmatic officers who knows what needs to be done and do their best to do it. They are faced with either victory or Nazi domination, and bring across the seriousness of their duties. On the other hand, Edward Fox and Ian McShane are unable to make much out of the scraps of character they are given, and Michael Caine, who’s usually at least an enjoyable presence even in bad movies, is bland and forgettable as another squadron commander. It is telling of the muddled storyline that it is not even clear that one character has been killed until we see other characters talking about it. Michael Redgrave and Patrick Wymark are Dowding’s subordinates struggling to coordinate their limited resources to meet one Luftwaffe raid after another, and the movie does give you an idea of the desperation of their job.

The Germans are given approximately equal screentime, and the Luftwaffe pilots are not vilified in the least; they are brave young pilots the same as the British, but no more developed. Manfred Reddemann is a cocky, cigar-chomping German squadron leader who is popular with his men and seems modeled after Adolf Galland, a dashing Luftwaffe ace who survived the war and, along with several of his former British adversaries, served as a technical advisor to this production. Alexander Allerson is another squadron leader who unintentionally accelerates the warfare by mistakenly bombing London, and Curt Jürgens, the most internationally recognizable “name” on the German side, disappointingly has only one scene as the German ambassador who tries to persuade his British counterpart (Ralph Richardson) to agree to peace negotiations with Hitler. Karl-Otto Alberty has two scenes as the Luftwaffe Chief of Staff Jeschonnek, and last and least is Hein Reiss as a bumbling, cartoonish Hermann Goering that doesn’t belong in a serious war film.

While Battle of Britain‘s almost complete lack of character development makes it hard to form any emotional attachment to what’s going on, it at least gives us some nice stuff to look at. The film boasted plenty of authentic WWII British and German planes, and they all look great. Many individual scenes are well-crafted: the prologue of the last few British pilots fleeing out of France, dozens of German Heinkel and Stuka bombers taking off with an ominous done and heading across the Channel, the population of Berlin scattering in shock as they experience their first air raid, and Hitler’s subsequent fiery speech before an enthralled audience vowing to annihilate the British (Hitler is represented by a man named Rolf Stiefel, in his only film appearance and seen only from a distance or from behind, who imitates his gestures and voice almost perfectly). Production values are top-notch, and the blazing devastation of the Blitz is captured vividly. The first few aerial dogfights are fantastic, cutting between many different angles to keep the action interesting. Unfortunately, the air battles seem to go on forever, and after a certain point they become repetitive and boring. Also, the pilots’ flight masks make it difficult and sometimes impossible to even tell who is who, limiting the audience’s ability to really care when someone gets shot down. The ending is as anti-climactic as they come. There is never any discernible point at which it is clear the British have won, the film simply peters out, and the end is made even more unsatisfactory by the inexplicable choice of the makers of the DVD to replace Churchill’s original quote which closes the film, “never has so much been owed by so many to so few“, with “this is not the end, nor even the beginning of the end, but it may be the end of the beginning“. While this is another famous Churchill quote, it is totally unsuited to this film, as that quote, unlike the first, did not refer to the Battle of Britain at all, instead to Montgomery’s victory over Rommel at El Alamein two years later.

At the bottom line, The Battle of Britain has many well-done aspects, but these fail to gel into a cohesive production. It can still be watched and enjoyed for the aerial dogfights, but if you are looking for a storyline with characters, it has little to offer.
**