'BATTLE OF BRITAIN'........HAPPY 50TH.....SORT OF.......

Battle Of Britain (1969)   We honestly can't get all that nostalgic and sentimental over this movie, hitting its 50th year anniversary........

                No doubt Harry Saltzman, the co-mogul of the Bond films,envisioned a grand, stirring all-star patriotic spectacle.......

                All star, sure. But hardly stirring. Under the command of a Field Marshall director like Guy Hamilton, it's corporate, impersonal filmmaking.......it looks like it was directed by a committee who had minimal interest in effective dramatization......

                    Which is why all the film's few, half-hearted, paltry attempts at high drama ring false and cold.

                 Of course, the physical logistics remain staggering.......and we're duly impressed that in the pre-CGI era, this involved actual stunt pilots in vintage planes staging wildly dangerous re-creations of the dogfights between the young men of the RAF and the Luftwaffe......

                 Unfortunately, the film also resorts to some less than state-of-the-art special effects, including one of the worst.....animating cartoonish fiery explosions on to shots of the planes........the sight of this literally screams out "Cheesy! Fake!" to an audience.

                 A few pluses though......it's always a pleasure to see almost the entire British acting community together in one film, even if they all pop up for less than a few minutes each.

                  Too bad, they get nothing to work with from either Hamilton or the script.......for all its epic scale and ambition, the movie remains remote and disconnected from its actors and whatever their individual stories are supposed to be......

                    Coming back to this movie 50 years later, the only thing we ever remembered originally was the sight of the German pilot taking a strafing hit right across his eyes. Years from now, it may still be one of two things we remember......

                    The other thing......the controversy over the film's two music scores. Sir William Walton, in ill health, managed to write a spectacular symphonic piece to accompany the air battles. Deeming it insufficient, Harry Saltzman engaged reliable war-movie composer Ron Goodwin to finish the rest of the score.

                    Goodwin's score dominates, propelled by his robust, catchy march for the Luftwaffe and a soaring,typically Goodwin-ian theme for the RAF.  At Laurence Olivier's insistence, the powerful Walton suite was not only restored for the film's climactic aerial combat, but played unaccompanied by any battle sound effects.

                   For a few minutes, Walton's score has the soundtrack all to itself........and it's the movie's one and only creatively artistic moment........the only sign that somebody gave some thought to something beyond the explosions and crashes......

                  As we said in this post's sub-title, a sort of happy 50th to "Battle Of Britain"........the film never did find a receptive audience.......both moviegoers and critics didn't  care for the corporate remoteness of it any more than BQ did.

                  See it once, if you're a cinema completist.......minutes later, except for the music and the eyeball strafing, you'll probably forget you ever saw it.......2 stars (**)