S. P. MacKenzie
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748623891
- eISBN:
- 9780748651276
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748623891.003.0013
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Stories about World War II were among the most bankable subjects for film-makers in the 1950s, particular subjects becoming especially attractive if they had already achieved success in print. This ...
More
Stories about World War II were among the most bankable subjects for film-makers in the 1950s, particular subjects becoming especially attractive if they had already achieved success in print. This was certainly the case with Reach for the Sky, the authorised biography of the legless air ace, Douglas Bader. Once developed into a feature film released in the summer of 1956, Reach for the Sky would show the Battle of Britain in a fashion superficially similar to, yet profoundly different from, the version on display in Angels One Five. Despite having lost both his legs in a pre-war flying accident, Bader had managed to force his way back into the air force when war came. By 1941, he had become one of the most publicly recognised of the Royal Air Force fighter aces. Shot down in the summer of 1941, Bader had made himself a constant headache for Germany as a prisoner of war before being liberated from Colditz Castle and given the task of leading the Battle of Britain Day fly-past over London on September 15, 1945.Less
Stories about World War II were among the most bankable subjects for film-makers in the 1950s, particular subjects becoming especially attractive if they had already achieved success in print. This was certainly the case with Reach for the Sky, the authorised biography of the legless air ace, Douglas Bader. Once developed into a feature film released in the summer of 1956, Reach for the Sky would show the Battle of Britain in a fashion superficially similar to, yet profoundly different from, the version on display in Angels One Five. Despite having lost both his legs in a pre-war flying accident, Bader had managed to force his way back into the air force when war came. By 1941, he had become one of the most publicly recognised of the Royal Air Force fighter aces. Shot down in the summer of 1941, Bader had made himself a constant headache for Germany as a prisoner of war before being liberated from Colditz Castle and given the task of leading the Battle of Britain Day fly-past over London on September 15, 1945.
S. P. MacKenzie
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748623891
- eISBN:
- 9780748651276
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748623891.003.0017
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Over the past sixty-odd years, the representation of the Battle of Britain in British cinema has undergone an evolutionary process in which established images and attitudes have developed roughly in ...
More
Over the past sixty-odd years, the representation of the Battle of Britain in British cinema has undergone an evolutionary process in which established images and attitudes have developed roughly in tandem with the changing social and cultural landscape of twentieth-century Britain. Feature films such as The Lion Has Wings and First of the Few helped develop a basic narrative of events in which The Few vanquish the many with the Spitfire. In the following decade, elements were added to this basic David-and-Goliath story in Angels One Five and Reach for the Sky. More than ten years on, there emerged the most wide-ranging and comprehensive treatment of events to date, The Battle of Britain, in which a variety of problems within the Royal Air Force were touched on and some of the horrors of war illustrated while, at the same time, the essential elements of the Finest Hour image, not least the heroism of pilots battling against the odds and saving Britain from invasion, were maintained.Less
Over the past sixty-odd years, the representation of the Battle of Britain in British cinema has undergone an evolutionary process in which established images and attitudes have developed roughly in tandem with the changing social and cultural landscape of twentieth-century Britain. Feature films such as The Lion Has Wings and First of the Few helped develop a basic narrative of events in which The Few vanquish the many with the Spitfire. In the following decade, elements were added to this basic David-and-Goliath story in Angels One Five and Reach for the Sky. More than ten years on, there emerged the most wide-ranging and comprehensive treatment of events to date, The Battle of Britain, in which a variety of problems within the Royal Air Force were touched on and some of the horrors of war illustrated while, at the same time, the essential elements of the Finest Hour image, not least the heroism of pilots battling against the odds and saving Britain from invasion, were maintained.
