Review of Battle of Britain (1969) by Harry W — 11 Feb 2014

Battle of Britain makes the conscious effort to attempt to show its story from the perspectives of both The British and The Germans without characterising its soldiers as viallains, but rather simply as young men who are doing their job by following the orders of superiors. It doesn't put too much depth into exploring its characters since its more focused on the war, and that keeps it up on the large scale that it reaches for.

The downside of this however is that it prevents the film from having any characters to connect to and therefore makes the film much of a technical one without any heart to it. There is no real characters even with a widely talented ensemble cast and the solid acting from actors including Laurence Olivier, Michael Caine, Robert Shaw and Christopher Plumber. Battle of Britain eventually descends into being nothing more than a film bereft of any depth or character development that can't even tell its story too well and attempts to cover it with expensive action sequences. But unfortunately, in the contemporary age it's easy to pick up on the lesser qualities of the film and the fact that director Guy Hamilton was so stuck into creating spectacular flight sequences that he forgot to incorporate in good human figures to make the war seem less technical.

But Battle of Britain proves itself to be a memorable visual experience.

The film is shot at beautiful scenery with great cinematography, and it captures the aviation sequences perfectly. The visuals in Battle of Britain are terrific and the flights are unforgettable, so aviation aficionados should surely enjoy Battle of Britain. I know for a fact I will never forget all the aviation.

Battle of Britain does prove to be a colourful looking film, but it's more of an explosion venture with some breakthrough action and incredible cinematography in lieu of proper storytelling or good characters. While the aviation is exhilarating, the way the film tells the story is not and it turns out to be a glacially paced war film that is stretched too far over too much running time with little to entertain if aviation isn't happening, especially since it retreads itself constantly in repetition of scenes and dramatic themes.

So really, Battle of Britain delivers the action and some spectacular aviation which should please fans of flight, but it is overlong and repetitive in attempting to tell its story without succeeding.