Battle of Britain (1969)

one of my absolute favorites!

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

So everyone else's comments, yes. But how about the funny bits? "Repeat please?" "Private polish chit chat", and "thanks awfully, old man", oh, and "get your hands up you Nazi bastard"Then there's the special effects. Obviously there's the explosions apparently achieved by scratching the negative. And of course the fishing line on the Stuka crashing into the chain home station. But my two favorites are the attack on the French airfield and the he 111 with the dangling string. In the airfield sequence, there's a strafing sequence when one Me comes straight at the camera, hurricane explodes, another me goes right to left, but the charges meant to show staging fire are reversed, so as the approaching me fires, the crossing charges fire, and so on.Then there's the he 111 with the tether. So they got a great shot of the large scale model 111 plunging into the channel, but the tether is still attached to the model for some reason? So they add in a shot of "control cables" snapping, to explain!

May 1940 would see France, Holland and Belgium fall to the might of the Nazis. Concurrently, the British and French suffer a crippling defeat at Dunkirk after being cut off by the Germans. The surviving soldiers of the British Expeditionary Force are evacuated just as Hitler plans the invasion of the British Isles, known as Operation Sea Lion. Firstly, the Nazis must achieve total air supremacy. When this proved difficult however, the German Luftwaffe resorted to a relentless bombing campaign of the British mainland. As the death toll of the Blitz increases, Air Chief Marshall Sir Hugh Dowding rallies the RAF to inflict greater casualties on the Luftwaffe. This marks the beginning of what would become known as the battle of Britain...An engaging but at times overwrought wartime epic, Battle of Britain was produced by James Bond's Harry Saltzman and directed by Guy Hamilton(who also helmed 4 Bond movies). I don't usually go for British war movies, although this film is an exception. It's a gripping effort from beginning to end which also serves as a decent history lesson, despite being highly anachronistic in appearance(check out those 60s hairstyles). I was impressed by the useful statistics just before the end credits regarding the number of allied and German pilots who fought and died in the battle of Britain. This was a commendable attention to detail that is seldom seen in other war movies and for once I felt as if I had learned a couple of interesting facts from simply watching a film. Battle of Britain is comprised of docu-drama style vignettes which were also a fine touch, although the film did loose itself in the multitude of characters and was therefore a little disjointed. There were instances when the film veered into cheesiness thus forcing the director to refer to the great big book of war movie clichés. This made some sequences unnecessary and others unintentionally humorous. The mostly wooden performances didn't do much to rectify this. The film contained a lot of sleepwalk performances and in the case of the German characters there was a lot of overacting(I couldn't take Hein Riess' Goring seriously, maybe it was his white uniform). I was also frustrated by the lack of sorrow displayed by a young Ian McShane after his character's wife and children are killed in an air raid. The corny romantic subplot between Christopher Plummer and Susannah York did not deserve a place in the script, but one can't have everything. At nearly 2hrs 10mins the film is slightly overlong with some scenes of padding in which unimportant characters come and go. I'm positive i've heard parts of Ron Goodwin's orchestral soundtrack in at least 2 other war movies. However, the title score was pretty catchy, but lacked substance.The action sequences were what carried the movie. Tasty pinches of suspense were scattered throughout the film with the air skirmishes. These battles became increasingly taut as the film progressed with the fiery destruction of aircraft as well as buildings and vehicles on the ground. The inclusion of blood squibs when the pilots were shot was also an excellent touch. Some of the special effects will look horribly cheap in a CGI world, but that's all part of the appeal. The climatic "battle in the air" was beautifully atmospheric. It was more than just another dogfight, this was men fighting for both survival and freedom. Tight stunts also had me on the edge-of-my-seat. I felt queasy watching pilots bail out of their burning aircraft thousands of feet in the air. The bombing of the airfields was eerily tense too. Masterful cinematography amazingly captured the raw fear of the pilots in combat. The dizzying 360 degree pans added to the suspense.Harry Saltzman's ambitious saga of the battle of Britain is of robust educational value. There's a bit of flag waving done too, but there's nothing wrong with that. Wedged firmly between classic and potboiler, the tight battle scenes and aforementioned educational value save the film from being mediocre. 8/10.

I was very lenient in rating this movie for two reasons: - I am a sucker for these types of movies - I thought that for a movie made in 1969 with very good special f/x for the time, some of the naiveté could be forgiven Otherwise I agree with Ebert. It is not a wonder that notwithstanding that this was am A-grade mega production, it did not receive even one award or even nomination worthy of mention.This movie is far too slow, especially the battle scenes. The repeat themselves almost endlessly and seem to be the 'raison d'etre' of the movie. What is missing is characterization, introspection, real emotions. We need to feel with the protagonists, see and comprehend their fear, be apart of it. In this film pilots live and die, and somehow we couldn't care less, it doesn't bring up any emotions in us. Historically, the movie is correct, but there again it lacks in detail, more 'behind the scenes' information. What they feed us is only the basic information you learn in 4th grade. Definitely not enough. All in all, average. What a pity, considering the star saturated cast and all the money spent.

Watched this on Netlix with 5.1 sound which was surprising for a movie of this vintage. Really excellent air battle scenes capturing the confusion and chaos of the fights. I liked the final 5-10 minutes which set the battles to music rather than any voice-over; it captured the balletic aspects of aerial battles while also including poignancy of the deaths and destruction.Unfortunately, this is a plot-less movie. Even the Battle of Britain itself was hopelessly confusing because you had to deduce the decisions that had been made by the Germans and why they changed the balance of the battle. This was only confused by a weak husband-wife sub-plot with the two arguing about her posting, but even that wasn't resolved.