The Battle of Britain is about, well, you can guess what it’s about. It’s based on the book The Narrow Margin by Derek Wood and Derek Dempster, and it’s fine; it’s better than fine; it’s very good, but it’s not great. There are some pretty cool aerial combat scenes, there are strong actors facing significant conflicts, there are a bunch of people in those cool coats with the furs collars, and people in big rooms pushing indicators around on a big map, but I don’t love it—I like it.

I like how it presents the history; it features relevant historical figures, as all international war epics do, who help us understand the battle, but this one gives us a close look at a number of people who are not Reich or Air Marshalls–we spend a lot of time with pilots who are in the midst of the battle and some time with their loved ones who face the challenges of the blitz. It’s the smallest of the epics.

This movie is, oddly, very unlike Tora! Tora! Tora! even though I’m constantly comparing the two and will certainly do so now. In Tora! Tora! Tora! both sides get equal time or something near to that–The Battle of Britain is about the British with glimpses of the Germans.

In Tora! Tora! Tora! there are few or maybe even no people you like or are invested in who are in peril. In The Battle of Britain people you know and may well like are in peril and some of them die–or their friends die, or are maimed.

For an epic, this movie can be awfully personal.

This movie is more personal—smaller—then any of the other international epics because the main focus is on The Few and Edward Fox (A Bridge Too Far, Soldier of Orange), a young Ian McShane (Deadwood), Robert Shaw (The Battle of the Bulge, Force Ten from Navarone) and Michael Caine (Let’s just list Play Dirty) all do strong work as RAF pilots with varying degrees of authority. They are all charming while also being aware of the weight they carry.

Shaw is particularly strong.  McShane is fine in this clip, but Shaw—the way he says “cut out the sir” gets to me. He’s carrying the burden of command while caring about his men.

Laurence Olivier (Air Chief Marshall Sir Hugh Dowding) seems to be pretty good at acting, too. His strength is in his quiet. He has some good lines, but he doesn’t push them. At one point he says, “the essential arithmetic is that our young men will have to shoot down their young men at the rate of four to one, if we’re to keep pace at all.” That’s a well-written line, but his delivery is excellent. He has a calm and a resignation; he’s a man with great power and responsibility, and he doesn’t yell.

Olivier’s first scene

The movie also features The Young Susannah York as Section Officer Maggie Harvey, apparently partially based on Dame Felicity Peake, who commanded the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) unit at RAF Biggin Hill. She may be the most polarizing figure in the movie. A significant portion of her character arc consists of arguments with her fighter pilot husband (Christopher Plummer, The Night of the Generals) about where she is posted and whether she should give up her current job to be closer to her husband, with the husband being stubborn and sulky about it; it is a women’s equality argument that doesn’t age well because the husband is so clearly a petulant child.

She also works in the command center, which lets us see another part of the picture, and she has to struggle as a woman in a man’s world there and as the wife of a pilot who is in constant danger of death or disfigurement (she is introduced to a pilot with massive scarring from burns who was from her husband’s regiment, just so we’re clear that this could happen to her husband, and it’s one more thing she has to worry about) and struggle as a human being with the challenges everyone faced during the blitz.

Her performance is fine, but she’s asked to go through a lot to help us see many parts of the picture. The danger is if you don’t identify with or even like York’s character much of the impact of the film may be lost.

This scene here is kind of well known and reportedly based on an event in Peake’s life

If you listened to that clip, you should understand the problem I have with the music. You will never find yourself humming the score to the The Battle of Britain, while you might for The Longest Day and are an unfeeling robot if you don’t in A Bridge too Far and The Great Escape. In the previous clip, the score just beats you over the head: “This is dramatic–look! Dead people!”

In the climactic final battle sequence, the score eschews it’s usual bombast for trying to directly reflect the action—if a plane is falling, the music is falling—when it strikes the ground the music makes a crashing sound. There is no other sound here and this portion was scored by William Walton, whose other work on the movie was replaced. I’m not crazy about Walton’s work, but it’s better than the rest.

The sound design itself, however, is strong. Some of the explosions of planes are clearly painted on to the print, and you can see it, but the explosion sounds that accompany them help them seem less unrealistic.

A lot of the aerial scenes are very good; a number of sources claim the producers had the thirty-fifth largest airport in the world during shooting. I don’t know how impressive being outside the top twenty is at that point in history, but they had a lot of planes, and they use them to good effect.

They didn’t have any Stukas, mainly because most didn’t survive the war, so some scenes with Stukas use models, and they’re fine, for that sort of thing.

The first German bomber attack of London is given a great deal of airtime and may be one of the best sequences of the film. What I don’t know is if the German airmen are being coldly efficient or solemnly efficient (“abashed” according to my notes) during the attack, as if they don’t like attacking a civilian and historical target either.

The bombs exploding and the fires in London look real and have the strange kind of beautiful that I’ll have to struggle with in many reviews—the awesome power and beauty of the flames that are killing people. And the bathing children are so real; of course that’s what kids would argue about.

Bombing London

The movie does a reasonably good job of showing English civilians, in an obviously pro-British way. There are scenes in a shelter, among the rubble of London, and one small glimpse of home guard soldiers, breaking ranks at the end of a drill and heading straight to the pub. McShane visits an air raid shelter where his family is and helps clear rubble to rescue victims.

Putting the focus on York’s character and McShane’s is a way to personalize the history, which this film does well. it gives history a human face and makes deaths and injuries personal instead of theoretical.

The more I look at it its parts, the better the movie seems; McShane’s story is good, Shaw and many other actors are strong, and Olivier is awesome. The action is stirring and exciting. It boils down to York—but really it’s Plummer; it’s annoying to hear someone bickering about his wife’s working in the middle of a war.

Battle of Britain is good; it’s fine; it’s just not The Longest Day or A Bridge too Far or maybe not even Tora! Tora! Tora! Maybe coming in fourth on this list is no shame. It’s more fun watching these dogfights and the Allies winning than it is watching the Japanese dominate the skies. Tora! Tora! Tora! is probably better, but the aerial sequences here are more entertaining.

Recommendation

If you’re interested in World War II films, you must watch this. You can see it for free on YouTube and through many public library websites, but the Blu-ray isn’t that expensive. Also if you can’t afford the Billy Bragg box set, try The Best of Billy Bragg at the BBC 1983-2019.

Wings of Glory is an excellent miniatures game with a Battle of Britain Starter Set–with cool models–you can get Stukas and Hurricanes in the expansions.