Tag: RAF

One Of Our Aircraft
Is Missing

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 22 October 2023
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Is Missing
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Producers-Writers-Directors – The Archers (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger) – 1942 – UK – Cert. PG – 103m

*****

Forced to bail out following an otherwise successful mission in which one engine is disabled, a British bomber crew must find their way across occupied Holland to return to the safety of Britain – part of major season Cinema Unbound: The Creative Worlds Of Powell + Pressburger from Monday, October 16th at BFI Southbank, also on BFI Blu-ray; other films in the season can be found on BFI Player

Made at the height of World War II, the first Powell and Pressburger / The Archers movie to deploy that verbal credit as such – but without their later trademark opening shot of an arrow striking its target – is in essence a propaganda exercise in the guise of a narrative feature film made to bolster wartime morale at home. However, the pair pull the whole thing off with such verve and inventiveness that it feels less an exercise in propaganda and more a rattling good yarn (without compromising either way).

It opens like a bizarre ghost story (as bizarre as the curse upon the Lairds of Kiloran in the castle ruins of “i know where I’m going!”… Read the rest

Tags aircraft, aircraft engine, airman, Bernard Miles, bomb, bomber, Britain, Catholic, church, church service, Cinema Unbound: The Creative Worlds Of Powell + Pressburger, country, cross-country, Emeric Pressburger, Emrys Jones, engine, Eric Portman, farmhouse, Frank Sherry, front gunner, Germany, Godfrey Tearle, Googie Withers, gunner, harbour, Holland, Hugh Burden, Michael Powell, Nazi, Nazi spies, night raid, observer Hugh Williams, Pamela Brown, Peter Ustinov, pilot, plane, propaganda, quisling, RAF, rear gunner, Robert Helpmann, Royal Air Force, rural, sea, small boat, spies, Stuttgart, swing bridge, The Archers, The Netherlands, Tom Earnshaw, UK, wartime, wartime propaganda, wireless op., wireless operator, World War 2, World War II, World War Two, WW2

Art Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Eric Ravilious:
Drawn To War

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 26 June 2022
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Drawn To War
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Director – Margy Kinmonth – 2022 – UK – Cert. PG – 87m

***1/2

The career of the British watercolour artist tragically killed while serving as an official war artist in World War Two – now available to watch online following UK cinema release on Friday, July 1st 2022

The first official war artist to be commissioned in World War Two, Eric Ravilious was on an aircraft which set out from Iceland in 1942 and never came back. There is no exact record of what took place, covered by the phrase “missing in action”, but in all likelihood the plane went down in the sea. Kinmonth finds simple images to convey the incident, which appears in both her opening introduction to Ravilious’ life and her closing reel representing his passing – a warplane descending, our viewpoint falling towards the surface of the sea, an indistinct body moving in water filled with bubbles. At the end, the cold blue of the water contrasts with the gentler, rural green of the family house and surroundings back home.

After his death, Ravilious’ art was largely ignored. Alan Bennett, an admirer of the artist’s work, puts this down to the work’s cheerful and unthreatening nature and a prevailing view that art should grapple with dark and foreboding subject matter.… Read the rest

Tags 1920s, 1930s, 1939, 1940s, 1942, a modest living, active service, Acton, Ai Weiwei, aircraft, Alan Bennett, artist, censor, coast, coastal defences, cramped interior, danger, destroyer, drawing, Eastbourne College of Art, Edward Bawden, enemy aircraft, Eric Ravilious, Essex, exhibition, Freddie Fox, Great Bardfield, Great Bardfield Artists, Greyson Perry, Harriet Walter, Henry Moore, HMS Dolphin, HMS Highlander, husbands and wives, Iceland, Jeremy Irons, Kenneth Clark, landscape, London, lost at sea, magnetic mine, Margy Kinmonth, Ministry of Information, Ministry of Information censor, missing in action, MOI, MOI censor, Morley College, Newhaven, official war artist, painting, Paul Nash, public exhibition, RAF, RCA, RN, Robert McFarlane, Royal Air Force, Royal College of Art, Royal Navy, Royal Observer Corps, Second World War, Society of Wood Engravers, student friend, submarine, submarine base, Tamsin Greig, Tirzah Garwood, Tush, UK, uncertainty, underwater, unsuitable for public exhibition, war, war artist, warplane, watercolour, World War 2, World War II, World War Two, WW2

Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Lancaster

Directors – David Fairhead, Anthony Palmer – 2022 – UK – Cert. PG – 110m

****

The story of World War Two’s iconic Lancaster bomber aircraft, the missions it flew and the airmen who served as its crews – out in cinemas on Friday, May 27th

The constant drone-like sound, the view looking downwards moving over water, a Lancaster bomber aircraft flying the length of a lake, the camera above it titling down as it passes to reveal it crossing a dam. This sequence, impressive on a big cinema screen equipped with a really good sound system, opens this informative and compelling documentary.

The Lancaster is entrenched in the British psyche from The Dam Busters (Michael Anderson, 1955) and in due course clips from that film and a few others appear here. I can remember seeing it many times on afternoon television as a child in the late 1960s / early 1970s. Present day footage of this amazing aircraft in flight jostles with comments by present day airmen who fly in it, and their enormous affection and respect for the aircraft comes through loud and clear. They are seen touching a plaque by the plane’s entrance doorway commemorating all those who flew her during World War Two as a way of taking the spirits of those people with them on flights today.… Read the rest

Tags A.V.Roe, aerial combat, aero-engines, airmen, Anthony Palmer, Avro, Blitz, bomb sighter, bomber, bombing of Dresden, bombing raids, bombing runs, casualties, Christian, Christianity, cities, crew, damage, dams, David Fairhead, designer, Dresden, empty seats, enemy, engines, factories, fire, firestorm, Germany, gunner, Hurricane, infrastructure, interview, Lancaster, Lancaster bomber, last flight out, Mariupol, miliary history, missions, motor, payload, pilot, production, RAF, raid, railway tunnels, Ray Chadwick, Rolls Royce, Rolls Royce Merlin, Rolls Royce Merlin engines, Ruhr Valley, Russia, Second World War, Spitfire, strategic bombing, target, UK, Ukraine, war casualties, wartime production, weapon of war, weapons production, weather, World War 2, World War II, World War Two, WW2

Features Live Action Movies

Dunkirk

Director – Christopher Nolan – 2017 – UK – Cert. 12a – 106m

*****

Review originally published in DMovies.org . On Amazon Prime from Thursday, April 1st.

British filmmaker Christopher Nolan – now one of the highest-grossing film directors in history, with the Dark Knight trilogy under his belt – has created a complex and multilayered film that cleverly interweaves three separate narrative strands: 1) on land over a week a young soldier (Fionn Whitehead) after he arrives alone at Dunkirk beach and falls in with others (including the music superstar and heartthrob Harry Styles); 2) on sea over a day a small, requisitioned, civilian boat (crew: three) go to bring home trapped combatants; and 3) in the air over an hour three Spitfires fly a sortie.

Nolan is fascinated by time and runs these in parallel so that an incident partly revealed in one strand is later retold in another revealing more. There’s a constant sense of the clock ticking differently in the three time frames: mind-bending and exhilarating stuff.

Full review at DMovies.org.

On Amazon Prime from Thursday, April 1st.

Trailers:

Original UK theatrical release: Friday, July 21st 2017.

Tags 70mm IMAX, army, battles, big screen, Brexit, Britain, Christopher Nolan, civilian, dogfight, Dunkirk, epic, fighter aircraft, IMAX, pilots, RAF, Royal Air Force, Second World War, UK, war, World War 2, World War II, World War Two, WW2

Features Live Action Movies

Hurricane

Director – David Blair – 2018 – Poland, UK – Cert. 15 – 107m

****

In cinemas from Friday 7th September

Review originally published in DMovies.org

It’s too easy to take most British WW2 movies (e.g. Dunkirk, Christopher Nolan, 2017) and claim they bolster the idea of Brexit – Britain alone against the world, defeating the dastardly Germans and so on. Hurricane is different. Its Royal Air Force (RAF) pilots are refugees from the Polish Air Force, wiped out by the Luftwaffe in a mere three days and kept on ice by Britain’s xenophobic War Office following their arrival in England.

When they’re finally allowed into the air, these Poles turn out to be much better fighter pilots than the majority of Brits who are being slaughtered by the enemy at an alarming rate. Indeed, it’s the Polish pilots that turn the Battle of Britain around.

Hurricane is named after the RAF’s most widely used fighter aircraft…

Full review at DMovies.org.

Trailer: