The Battle of Britain on the Big Screen

The Battle of Britain on the Big Screen written by Dilip Sarkar MBE and published by Air World Books - £22 - Hardback - Pages 272

During the Second World War, the British movie industry produced a number of films

concerning the war, all of which were, by necessity, heavily myth-laden and

propagandised. Foremost among these productions was The First of the Few, which

was the biggest-grossing film of 1942.

In the immediate post-war period, to start with there were no British aviation war films. The first to be released was Angels One Five in 1952. It was well-received, confirming that the Battle of Britain was a commercial commodity.

Over the next few years, many famous war heroes published their memoirs, or had books written about them, including the legless Group Captain Douglas Bader, whose story, Reach for the Sky, told by Paul Brickhill, became a best-seller in 1956. It was followed a year later by the film of the same name, which, starring Kenneth More, dominated that year’s box office.

The early Battle of Britain films had tended to focus upon the story of individuals, not the bigger picture. That changed with the release of the star-studded epic Battle of Britain in 1969. Using real aircraft, the film, produced in colour and on a far larger scale than had been seen on film before, was notable for its spectacular flying sequences.

Between the release of Reach for the Sky and Battle of Britain, however, much had changed for modern Britain. For a variety of reasons many felt that the story of the nation’s pivotal moment in the Second World War was something best buried and forgotten. Indeed, the overall box office reaction to Battle of Britain reinforced this view – all of which might explain why it was the last big screen treatment of this topic for many years.

It was during the Battle of Britain’s seventieth anniversary year that the subject returned to the nation's screens when Matthew Whiteman’s docudrama First Light was first broadcast. Essentially a serialisation of Spitfire pilot Geoffrey Wellum’s best-selling memoir of the same title, Whiteman cleverly combined clips of Wellum as an old man talking about the past with his new drama footage. The series is, in the opinion of the author, the best portrayal of an individual’s Battle of Britain experience to have been made.

In this fascinating exploration of the Battle of Britain on the big screen, renowned historian and author Dilip Sarkar examines the popular memory and myths of each of these productions and delves into the arguments between historians and the filmmakers. Just how true to the events of the summer of 1940 are they, and how much have they added to the historical record of ‘The Finest Hour’?

This was a fascinating and fantastic book looking at world war two films and the Battle of Britain in particular. Now as a young boy I feel like I grew up watching these old war films and westerns, a Sunday wouldn’t go by without watching a film about the country at war. The Battle of Britain & The Dambusters were a couple of my favourites. What Sarkar does with this book is look at a number of films made just after the war and a number in the decades after the forties. He looks at the myth surrounding the subjects and how the subject would fare, and he also looks at why, how and the standards of what films were made and how they were received by the public. We learn a lot from Mr Sarkar about the different ways films were filmed or portrayed and how that evolved, we also learn more about the background of certain films and how they were made and the evolution of the films into later films on almost the same subjects. As a premier writer on this subject in many forms, Dilip Sarkar has written another excellent book, showing there is still a lot to learn on the subject. A book I would happily recommend to others.