Battle of Britain [Blu-ray]
by Guy Hamilton
![Battle of Britain [Blu-ray]](/images/Battle-of-Britain-Blu-ray-B000WC39RW-L.jpg)
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Blu-ray details
Actor: Curd Jrgens, Harry Andrews, Ian McShane, Michael Caine, Trevor HowardDirector: Guy Hamilton
Brand: Sony
Writer: Derek Dempster
Writer: Derek Wood
Writer: James Kennaway
Writer: Wilfred Greatorex
Blu-ray: Region Code 1
Audio: French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language); French (Dubbed); Spanish (Dubbed)
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, Dubbed, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 132 minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: 2008-06-03
Audience Rating: G (General Audience)
Studio: MGM
Blu-ray Reviews of Battle of Britain [Blu-ray]
Blu-ray Review: Blu-ray is here. A great revival
Summary: 5 Stars
MGM's 1969 "Battle of Britain" is out on a remarkable transfer on Blu-ray. The visual is ninety percent plus percent of the original cinematic film in resolution and color verity. The improvement over previous DVD transfers is more noticeable than that of the DVD over the tape. I checked all three.
You expect dazzling aerial sequences in the bright sun of the skies, and this is everything you hope for, especially when they are flying "down on the deck" mere feet above the North Sea with its great color contrast and detailed waves.
However, it is the interior scenes that give you the deep sense of context from the materials and colors. The grain of the wooden molding is discernable beneath the well waxed varnish. The ivory painted plaster walls reveal the undulations of hundred year old craft.
You see things you could not see, even in a first rate movie house; for example, you can trace the focal length and depth of field as a long shot finally begins to draw back and the surfaces slowly come in and out of focus along that corridor.
Now can you appreciate the director's (Guy Hamilton) and the film director's (Freddie Young) artistic intent when a long-held long-shot finally resolves into a close-up of sheet of top grade cotton rag stationery, with the indentations and bubbles of the paper, and the black type left by finger-struck hammers of the old typewriter. The camera moves to punctuate the little scene with the sky invoking blue ink signature left by the glide of the fountain pen. A quiet moment of perfection.
The movie is not bad either. The remnant of a wing of Hawker Hurricane fighters (the principal aircraft of the battle, in case you imagined otherwise) escapes what Bugs Bunny called "a whole mess of Messerschmitts" only because the lame ducks, that had just been doused with aviation fuel, were lit up by the attackers. The result was perfectly captured smoke and flame that fooled them into thinking all were caught on the ground. Escape was the closest thing to victory those days.
If you find yourself wondering why the ME109s as so much more spiffy than the Spitfires, remember that they went out of production only five years before this movie was made. So if they look a little funny in the nose, it is because they are sporting Rolls Royce Merlin engines, ironically used by their former opponents. In fact an entire point of irony lays here. The Luftwaffe is played entirely by the Spanish Air Force.
Olivier is so smug in his trademark disguise as Air Marshall Dowding. You see his great attention to detail - longer in the chair in front of the mirror than in front of the camera. Jurgens plays on his British side this time; he must have learned how it turns out.
The drama is overt yet unexpected, exemplified in a sequence beginning with the confident swagger into Dunkirk, juxtaposed, not to an hysterical scamper into so many small boats. Rather, we are served a slow saturated master shot of the stark, depopulated beach alone. Strewn with unmanned vehicles and discarded materiel, now debris, all is silent and still, save the breeze alone.
The victorious swell of the Deutsche band (Mit a bang. Mit a boom. Mit a bing-bang bing-bang boom). Ahem, sorry. Actually, so pristine is the percussiveness that it borders on the prissy, at least until rescued by the full throated brass.
Speaking of brass, the best line in the movie is "We can leave strategy to those with egg on their hats."
Why is this movie so satisfying? Usually an all-star cast like this one means mediocrity on the order of an all-star game. But nobody is hot-dogging here.
There are more reasons. The cars and boats and buildings are the supporting cast. They have poise. They have an immediacy both gratifying and expository. They exceed almost anything now done under the rubric of special "effects". Even the planted and timed explosives meant to simulate bomb blasts are realistic. That is to say they are no bigger than they really were. So the bombing of the airfields shows you how much or how little each bomb could do. You can see each leaf on a full tree shake, or a roof collapse. Bombs were mostly little until the assaults on London. On the other hand, special effects are on a greedy line where each has to be replaced, inanely and endlessly with something BIGGER. Ships flying in the sky, whole cities into sand, that sort of chaff.
You get to see Goering in his blimpish baby blues become Churchill's secret weapon. By squandering the flower of the bomber force, let alone chase aircraft, they would never become available for ground support, where they would really have made all the difference, in the east. And hats off for showing the role of the amazing 141 Polish pilots that made it to the U.K.
There is an interesting late sequence high over London where we revert to the silent film. No gunfire or engine noise or radio chatter. Only the wide sky ballet on the screen, supported by symphony. Both are Stravinsky in effect. This sequence is the coup de grace.
I have a new appreciation for Blu-ray to convey original intent, and accidentally more at times. And the burn victim was W.G. Forley who truly was and has his foreshadowing moment. Blu-ray and Battle of Britain, both together - five stars.
Description of Battle of Britain [Blu-ray]
No Description Available.Genre: Feature Film-Action/Adventure
Rating: G
Release Date: 6-NOV-2007
Media Type: Blu-Ray
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