THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN (1969) *** .and it was all going badly, quite badly, until Churchill shook out the cobwebs of his alcohol-induced daze and arose on his hindlegs from the hallowed halls of Westminster like some anglicised magnification of Godzilla. It's not like that, really, the film, but in a way it quite is. It's all for hyper-realism through the isolated filter of a lens. Whether that lens is poetic or of a camera, I'm uncertain that it matters. The filmmakers wisely surmise that most of us have some sense of how World War II went, who was for the best and all that, and instead focus on the dynamics. Microcosmic dynamics rendering all humans to be more like glorified ants seeking shelter in their scope, which hardly leaves the humans irrelevant. It only means that so much less effort need be made to define the many levels of existence, when that existence itself is at issue. In that way I guess we're left to ponder who we'd want on our team the most: many candidates but it's really down to Michael Caine and Robert Shaw. I'd take Shaw in a barfight, he's got that killer instinct that knows no bounds, can't be blurred and doesn't turn off. You get the sense that if the Nazis ever managed to shoot him down he'd ram them out of the sky on his way to the morgue. Caine is even more fatal, a consigliere sort who prefers to put in the knife himself, if only to ensure that it's done properly. But not only that, either. I'm willing to believe that air battle is never going to be filmed this well again: I don't know who shot or edited (or flew, for that matter) but Guy Hamilton has the ultimate quiver of shots to work with and William Walton's "Battle in the Air" to jigsaw choreograph with..just incredible stuff. Classical instrumentation would be dangerous for the novice war film director to play with, but in Guy's hands every touch is a trump. Guy also brings it back time and again with humour-often gallows humour but humour-without disrupting either focus or momentum. Again, the characters are very secondary, but it wouldn't have worked if they weren't portrayed so well: Susannah York, Laurence Olivier, Michael Redgrave, Christopher Plummer.all-star cast working with very little time each, but all making you see the character rather than the well-defined actor. If you want your kid to stop talking about video games, show 'em this.but be ready for them to fly around the house claiming to be Spitfires!
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