The summer of 2020 sees the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Britain and Cinema Paradiso marks this momentous occasion by paying tribute to 'the Few', as the country stood alone against the Nazis.
As regular readers will know, Cinema Paradiso has been marking the major anniversaries of the events of the Second World War that took place eight decades ago. In the first article, we looked at the experiences of civilians on the Home Front, as well as the atrocities endured by the peoples of Occupied Europe. Our second survey took us to the beaches of Dunkirk and the prisoner of war camps deep inside the Third Reich. We also commemorated the courage of those who fought the war at sea.
Before we take to the air, we should mention a clutch of pictures set against the Blitz that have become available since we examined the impact of the war on ordinary men, women and children in the cities targeted by the Luftwaffe. Arthur Askey and Richard 'Stinker' Murdoch try to do their bit for morale by putting on a show in Aldwych Tube station during an air raid in Marcel Varnel's I Thank You (1941), while the showbiz theme is continued in Victor Savile's Tonight and Every Night (1945), as Rita Hayworth tops the bill at a music hall that keeps putting on a show for the likes of RAF squadron leader Lee Bowman during the heaviest bombing.
An all-star cast takes us on a tour through English history, as American war reporter Kent Smith considers selling the London home he has inherited in Forever and a Day (1943), a Hollywood flagwaver that included vignettes directed by Edmund Goulding, Cedric Hardwicke, Frank Lloyd, Victor Saville, Robert Stevenson, Herbert Wilcox, René Clair and an uncredited Alfred Hitchcock. Fritz Lang worked without credit on another war correspondent saga, Archie Mayo's Confirm and Deny (1941), which shares a plotline about the planned German invasion of Britain with Frank Tuttle's The Hour Before the Dawn (1944). Frustratingly, neither of these intriguing fine films is available. But it is possible to see how Alf Garnett (Warren Mitchell) defended the East End against Adolf Hitler in Norman Cohen's feature version of the contentious BBC sitcom, Till Death Us Do Part (1968), while the London Blitz provides the starting point for Robert Stevenson's engaging slice of Disney escapism, Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971), which combined live-action and animated sequences.
Never Was So Much Owed By So Many
The significance of the duel between the RAF and the Luftwaffe over the Home Counties in the summer of 1940 is made manifest by the sheer number of documentaries on the subject available to rent from Cinema Paradiso. Several are newsreel compilations that have been dated according to the footage used, including Battle of Britain: View From the Cockpit, The Battle of Britain, British Campaigns: Battle of Britain and the Blitz (all 1940), The Battle of Britain (1941), WWII: The War Chronicles: The Battle of Britain (1943) and The Battle of Britain (1945).
Easily the most striking of the contemporary films is Frank Capra's The Battle of Britain (1944), which was produced as part of the seminal 'Why We Fight' series that was commissioned to shatter the insularity of the Isolationist era and teach American audiences about the state of the world in which they were living. Hollywood had striven to avoid taking sides during the first two years of the conflict, as it wished to avoid offending America's sizeable German and Italian populations. Moreover, the studios wished to retain their markets in Occupied Europe. But British directors like Charlie Chaplin (The Great Dictator) and Alfred Hitchcock (Foreign Correspondent, both 1940) had tried to pass propaganda messages to US audiences. The country was already at war by the time Capra and Anatole Litvak launched the series with Prelude to War (1942), The Nazis Strike and Divide and Conquer (both 1943). But the pair were determined to make sure American realised how close Britain had come to defeat and they continued to show how the Allies had suffered in order to keep the Axis at bay in The Battle of Russia (1943) and The Battle of China (1944) before concluding the septet with War Comes to America (1945).
We shall come to the War in the Pacific and the Holocaust in due course. But, for now, we shall return to the sacrifice made by the air crews from many nations who responded to Winston Churchill's rallying cry after the Fall of France in June 1940. Their heroics are recalled in actualities, among many others, like Stephen Saunders's Battle of Britain (2005) and The Last of the Few (2007), and Aaron Young's The Battle of Britain Story (2010). But there are dozens of DVDs to choose from, including World War II: The Battle of Britain (2002), The Battle of Britain: The Official History, True Stories of WWII: The Battle of Britain (both 2001), Story of the Battle of Britain & Aircraft of WWII (2009), Aircraft of the Battle of Britain (2010), The Battle of Britain (2011), The Battle of Britain (2013) and Battle of Britain: Empty Skies (2020).
And, of course, there are always the relevant episodes in the finest overview available to rent, The World At War (1973-74), which was narrated by Laurence Olivier. But do seek out the numerous documentaries on Churchill, as well as the iconic planes used by the RAF, such as the Spitfire, the Hurricane, the Blenheim and the Lancaster. Just type the key words into the search line and browse the resulting titles.
This Was Their Finest Hour
In his speech to the House of Commons on 18 June 1940, Churchill declared that 'the Battle of Britain is about to begin'. Having refused to contemplate a peace treaty with Germany, he started making plans to defend the British Isles from the might that Hitler would unleash under Operation Sea Lion. In order to launch a land offensive, however, the Nazis had to weaken the resistance of the RAF and the civilian population. Consequently, the Luftwaffe began to target British airfields between 10 July and 31 October, while the major ports and industrial cities were subjected to a merciless Blitz between 7 September 1940 and 11 May 1941.
Gary Oldman captured Churchill's bulldog spirit to Oscar-winning effect in Joe Wright's Darkest Hour (2017). While voicing his concerns at Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement, Churchill had been negotiating a screenwriting deal with Alexander Korda, who had promised to put Denham Studios at the nation's disposal if war broke out. He was forced to make good on his promise on 3 September 1939 and, within two months, Korda had released The Lion Has Wings, using his own life insurance policy to complete the shoot. Co-directed by Michael Powell, Brian Desmond Hurst and Adrian Brunel, this paean to the preparedness of the RAF stars Ralph Richardson and Merle Oberon as a wing commander and his wife doing their bit in the run-up to the war's first aerial bombing raid on Kiel.
Another screen stalwart to throw himself into war work was actor Leslie Howard, who featured in numerous shorts for the Ministry of Information, as well as rousing adventures like the self-directed Pimpernel Smith and Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's 49th Parallel (both 1941). He doubled up again in The First of the Few (1942), a biopic of RJ Mitchell, in which Squadron Leader Geoffrey Crisp (David Niven) looks back from the heat of the Battle of Britain to how Mitchell came up with the idea for the Spitfire after a meeting in 1930s Germany with rival aircraft designer, Willy Messerschmitt (Erik Freund).
Extracts from this occasionally fanciful film can be found in Anthony Palmer and David Fairhead's Spitfire (2018), an ambitious documentary narrated by Charles Dance that combines spectacular new aerial footage by John Dibbs with recollections by such pilots as Tom Neil and Geoffrey Wellum and by Mary Ellis, who was one of the Air Transport Auxiliary fliers who delivered the planes to RAF bases. Their lives were made easier by the development of radar and Peter Ustinov pays tribute to the backroom boffins who perfected the technology in School For Secrets (1946), which stars Ralph Richardson at the head of a team of five scientists straining to have the system operational before the Nazis can launch their air assault.
Such was the shortage of planes for much of the war that the air ministry was reluctant to release many for filming purposes. Thus, it wasn't until 1952 that George More O'Ferrall got to direct Angels One Five, which takes its title from the radio slang for radar contact at 15,000 feet. Based on a book by Wing Commander Pelham Groom, the story of the rivalry between Hurricane squadron leader Jack Hawkins and reckless pilot John Gregson benefits enormously from the fact that O'Ferrall had served as a staff officer with the Royal Artillery at Fighter Command headquarters during the Battle of Britain. Nominated for Best Film and Best British Film at the BAFTAs, the action gained added authenticity through the presence of Ronald Adam, a squadron leader who had been the Fighter Group Controller at RAF Hornchurch in the summer of 1940.
Adapted from a bestselling non-fiction book by Paul Brickhill, Lewis Gilbert's Reach For the Sky (1956) went one better in taking the BAFTA for Best British Film. Only landing the role after a huge pay cheque lured Richard Burton to Hollywood to headline Robert Rossen's Alexander the Great (1956), Kenneth More is superb as Douglas Bader, the irrepressible pilot who fights back from losing both legs in an air crash in 1931 to lead a squadron of Canadian pilots during the Battle of Britain before becoming a wing commander at the famous base, RAF Tangmere. Moreover, Bader would find himself in Colditz Castle after several escape attempts as a POW and he returned to Blighty in time to lead the flypast over London in September 1945.
More would return in the relatively minor role of the station commander at RAF Duxford in Guy Hamilton's Battle of Britain (1969), a big-budget reconstruction of the rearguard action that many believe turned the war. Laurence Olivier leads the stellar ensemble as Air Chief Marshall Sir Hugh Dowding, who served as a technical adviser alongside Douglas Bader. Among the other famous faces are Michael Caine, Susannah York, Robert Shaw, Christopher Plummer, Ralph Richardson and Trevor Howard. Released ahead of the 30th anniversary of the battle, the film met with a mixed reception from baby boomers tired of hearing about war heroics at the height of the Vietnam conflict. But it has since acquired a reputation for reasonable historical accuracy, while the aerial footage using authentic planes was so spectacular that it was recycled in such diverse pictures as Norman Cohen's Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall (1972), Gerald Thomas's Carry On England (1976) and John Boorman's Hope and Glory (1987).
Facts are at a premium in Enzo G. Castellari's Eagles Over London (1969), but this Macaroni Combat picture is packed with far-fetched action, as a column of German soldiers under Francisco Rabal steals some dog tags from the battlefield and mingles with the Allied stragglers heading towards Dunkirk. Their mission is to knock out the radar system defending the English coastline. But Frederick Stafford, the commander of the dead commandos, and air marshall Van Johnson have other ideas. Nine years later, Castellari would make Inglorious Bastards (1978), which proved a major influence on Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds (2009).
The latter's big set-piece takes place in a cinema, but it's a concert hall that helps Polish pianist Stefan Radetzky (Anton Walbrook) regain his memory in Brian Desmond-Hurst's Dangerous Moonlight (1941). This was one of the first films to mention the airmen from Occupied Europe who joined the RAF during the war. Too shell-shocked to recall his aerial exploits in his homeland, Radetzky is jolted back into the present on a fund-raising tour for Polish orphans and he returns to London in time for the Battle of Britain. Remembered for Richard Addinsell's 'Warsaw Concerto', this was a sentimental hit with wartime audiences. But six decades were to pass before Jan Sverak revisited the theme in Dark Blue World (2001), which follows Czechoslovakian pilots Franta Slama (Ondrej Vetchy) and Karel Vojtisek (Krystof Hadek), as they are made to learn English before being allowed to join an embattled RAF in the summer of 1940.
The same season provides the setting for Denis Delic's 303 Squadron (2018), which was based on Arkady Fiedler's 1942 book about the contribution made by Polish flyboys to the Battle of Britain. But, while Witold Urbanowicz (Piotr Adamczyk) and Jan Zumbach (Maciej Zakoscielny) are zealous patriots while at the controls of their Hawker Hurricanes, they are respectively haunted by their friendships with German ace Von Rüttenberg (Steffen Mennekes) and engineer's daughter, Jagoda (Anna Prus). Iwan Rheon and Marcin Dorocinski take on the roles of Zumbach and Urbanowicz in David Blair's Hurricane (2018), which also purports to tell the true story of the RAF recruits from Eastern Europe. In addition to noting the achievements of Pole Zdzislaw Henneberg (Christopher Jaciow) and Czech Josef František (Kryštof Hádek), this solidly made saga also shows how Canadian John A. Kent (Milo Gibson) became such an integral part of 303 Squadron that he was given the nickname 'Kentowski'.
The role played by Jamaican pilots is highlighted in John Alexander's two-part BBC adaptation of Andrea Levy's prize-winning novel, Small Island (2009), as Michael Roberts (Ashley Walters) flees the Caribbean after an adulterous affair and joins up alongside compatriot Gilbert Joseph (David Oyelowo) and London bank clerk, Bernard Bligh (Benedict Cumberbatch), who has been caring for his father, Arthur (Karl Johnson), who has never recovered from his Great War shell shock.
If the war only plays a smallish part in these proceedings, it provides the decisive climax to Herbert Wilcox's They Flew Alone (1942), one of the many biopics this under-appreciated director made with wife Anna Neagle. As pioneering aviatrix Amy Johnson, Neagle is well paired with Robert Newton as husband and frequent co-pilot, Jim Mollison. Having broken records in the 1930s with her long-distance solo flights, Johnson joined the Air Transport Auxiliary as a ferry pilot. A miscalculation also proves key in Ken Annakin's Landfall (1949), an adaptation of a Nevil Shute bestseller that centres on Coastal Command pilot Michael Dennison's attack on a Nazi U-boat near Portsmouth. When the wreckage of a British submarine is found, however, Dennison is charged with friendly fire negligence. But the truth is more complicated.
Friend or Foe
Although films like John Guillermin's The Blue Max (1966), Roger Corman's The Red Baron (1971) and Nikolai Müllerschön's The Red Baron (2008) acknowledged the skills of the Kaiser's Great War flying aces, there was nothing romantic about the ruthless tactics of Hermann Goering's Luftwaffe. Consequently, Hollywood has opted not to tilt a wing and even German film-makers have steered clear of the topic since Helmut Kautner's The Devil's General (1955) and Alfred Weidenmann's The Star of Africa (1957), which respectively starred Curd Jürgens and Joachim Hansen in biopics of the noble Ernst Udet and the charismatic Hans-Joachim Marseille.
Petter Naess's Cross of Honour (2012) chronicles the encounter over Norway in the spring of 1940 that required British and German airmen to co-operate in order to survive in the wilderness. Rupert Grint and Lachlan Nieboer play the Fleet Air Arm duo, while Florian Lukas, David Kross and Stig Henrik Hoff comprise the crew of a crashed Heinkel bomber.
Collaboration was also the key to success in Sergei Nolbandov's Ships With Wings (1941), as John Clements is dispatched to a small Greek island after killing Ann Todd's brother in a reckless air stunt. Fortunately, he's in the right place to spot that businessman Hugh Williams is a Nazi spy with designs on the British fleet and Clements joins the local air defences in order to save the day. Churchill detested this film for lauding solo heroics over teamwork and considered banning it. But he was all in favour of another redemption story, Henry King's A Yank in the RAF (1941), because Tyrone Power's switch from ferry pilot to bomber ace in order to impress old flame Betty Grable showed American audiences why their country needed to join the fight against Fascism.
Recruits from the British Empire found it equally hard to acclimatise, as Russell Crowe discovers when he goes into training in Canada in Aaron Kim Johnston's For the Moment (1993), which was based on the experiences of the director's bomber pilot father. But, as fans of the BBC sitcom, 'Allo, 'Allo! (1982-92), will know from the case of Fairfax (John D. Collins) and Carstairs (Nicholas Frankau), downed RAF pilots were usually succoured by resistance forces in Occupied Europe.
Michael Powell's One of Our Aircraft Is Missing (1942) provides an early wartime example of this selfless heroism, as Dutch patriots protect the crew of a Wellington bomber that is forced to ditch near the Zuider Zee en route to a bombing raid on Stuttgart. Led by Pamela Brown and Googie Withers, the partisans help smuggle pilot Hugh Burden and his pals to the coast and the risks taken to cross the Channel and resume hostilities are further outlined in Jeffrey Dell's The Flemish Farm (1943), as Belgian Air Force pilot Clifford Evans survives the Battle of Britain before being parachuted back into his homeland to retrieve his regimental colours.
This spirited adventure was made all the more gripping by the music composed by Ralph Vaughan Williams. But Ron Goodwin's theme for Walter Grauman's 633 Squadron (1964) has become even more iconic and is only surpassed by 'The Dam Busters March' that was composed by Eric Coates for Michael Anderson's 1955 film (see below) and overshadowed the remainder of the score produced by Leighton Lucas. Adapted from a novel by former RAF pilot Frederick E. Smith, Grauman's film made spectacular use of locations around Glencoe and eight De Havilland Mosquitos to show how an RAF unit led by American Cliff Robertson prepared for an attack on a Nazi factory hidden in a Norwegian fjord. As the first colour features to be filmed in widescreen Panavision, the picture had a huge influence on the flying sequences in George Lucas's Star Wars (1977).
Following along the same lines, Boris Sagal's Mosquito Squadron (1969) charts the efforts of Squadron Leader David Buck and his Canadian RAF counterpart, David McCallum, to use a bouncing 'Hightail' bomb to destroy the Château de Charlon in Northern France, which is crucial role to the V-1 flying bomb campaign being waged against London and the Home Counties in the summer of 1944. Messerschmitts prove a doughty opponent, however, as they do for the Soviet VVS in Ukrainian actor-director Leonid Bykov's Only 'Old Men' Are Going Into Battle (1973), an Iron Curtain classic that joins the 2nd Squadron of the Fighter Aircraft Guard Regiment as it prepares to provide aerial support at the Battle of Kursk in 1943.
Bombs Away
Having withstood the Blitz, Britain devised its own bombing strategy as the tide of the Second World War started to turn. Military, industrial and transport hubs were frequently targeted. But, as George Roy Hill reveals in his adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five (1972), civilian sites were often hit, as in the notorious fire-bombing of Dresden. According to Bomber Command chief Arthur Harris, Germany had 'sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind'. But his tactics have increasingly come to be seen as controversial and Harris was branded a 'colonial warmonger' during the 'Topple the Racists' campaign that followed the death of George Floyd in May 2020.
Without wishing to further inflame the controversy, Cinema Paradiso draws your attention to the following films depicting the activities of Allied bomber crews and the combat codes they followed. In seeking to give audiences a glimpse of Britain fighting back after being on the receiving end of aerial bombardment, Harry Watt's Target For Tonight (1941) centres on the Wellington codenamed 'F For Freddie' during an RAF mission against a Nazi storage facility near Freiburg. This graphic Crown Film Unit docudrama was widely seen in the United States after it received an honorary Academy Award. Indeed, a bomber is given the same moniker in Herman Wouk's bestseller The Winds of War, which was adapted as a mini-series in 1983 by director Dan Curtis.
Moreover, when America joined the war, William Keighley noted Watt's technique in making Target For Today (1944). Rather than rely on models and newsreel footage, however, a camera crew boarded a B-17 Flying Fortress to record the Eighth Air Force raid on East Prussia, which was described by General Henry H. Arnold as 'the greatest strike ever'. The contrast between this actuality and Raoul Walsh's Desperate Journey (1942) couldn't be greater, as Errol Flynn, Ronald Reagan and Arthur Kennedy survive the crash-landing of an RAF bomber in Germany and make their way across land to get back to Blighty.
Twins John and Roy Boulting went for a more authentic approach in Journey Together (1946), which was written for the RAF Film Production Unit by acclaimed playwright Terence Rattigan. Richard Attenborough, Jack Watling and David Tomlinson play the trio hoping to become bomber pilots, only for the former to have to overcome the disappointment of having to settle for training as a navigator. With a guest appearance by Edward G. Robinson during the Canadian sequences, this fascinating insight into daily operations proved a worthy companion piece to Anthony Asquith's The Way to the Stars (1945), which was scripted by Rattigan from the 1942 stage play, Flare Path, which was based on his experiences as a flight lieutenant. At the heart of the story is Peter Penrose (John Mills), who joins 720 Squadron at Halfpenny Field under Squadron Leader Carter (Trevor Howard) and Flight Lieutenant David Archdale (Michael Redgrave).
Kent-born Bob Hope makes a guest appearance, while fellow comic Arthur Askey also looks on the lighter side in Val Guest's Bees in Paradise (1944), which sees the chirpy mechanic's bomber ditch near Paradise Island in the middle of the Atlantic and the crew (rather ungallantly) become the reluctant guests of Queen Antoinette Cellier.
Attitudes have changed for the better since the release of this slice of musical escapism. But some films from this period have retained their classic status, including Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's A Matter of Life and Death (1945), which opens with Squadron Leader Peter Carter (David Niven) returning from a bombing raid in a pranged Lancaster. He has ordered his crew to bail out, but his parachute has been shredded and he thinks he is having his final conversation when he makes contact with June (Kim Hunter), an American radio operator back at base. With its shifts from three-strip Technicolor to monochrome during the earthbound and heavenly sequences that are linked by a majestic staircase, this timeless fantasy is notable for the tensions between the British and the American characters, even though they were on the same side in the war.
Anglo-American relations were more cordial during the filming of William Wyler's documentary, The Memphis Belle (1944). Serving as a major in the US Army Air Corps, Wyler and three cameramen accompanied B-17 pilot Robert K. Morgan on a raid from RAF Bassingbourn on Wilhelmshaven and Lorient. The plane became part of aviation history when it completed its 25th mission and returned Stateside in one piece and, in 1990, Wyler's producer daughter, Catherine, teamed with David Puttnam to make Memphis Belle, Michael Caton-Jones's dramatised reconstruction of events in the spring of 1943 that features Matthew Modine, Eric Stoltz and Tate Donovan among the fine ensemble cast.
Wyler's film makes mention of a pilot named Lay and there's every reason to believe this is a nod to Bernie Lay, Jr., an Eighth Air Force veteran who used his experiences as the basis for the novel, Twelve O'Clock High, which he co-wrote with Sy Bartlett. who had served with the Army Pictorial Service before becoming an intelligence assistant with the Eighth's Bomber Command at RAF Daws Hill near High Wycombe. Henry King directed the 1949 film version, which earned Oscars for Best Sound and Best Supporting Actor for Dean Jagger as Major Harvey Stovall, who recalls the arrival in 1942 at RAF Archbury of Brigadier General Frank Savage (Gregory Peck), whose martinet approach to discipline earns him the dislike and respect of his crews.
The rulebook also proves a problem for Wing Commander Tim Mason (Dirk Bogarde) in Philip Leacock's Appointment in London (1952), as he defies the orders of the top brass to fly his 90th sortie, even though some members of his squadron think they've been jinxed. Scripted and scored by John Wooldridge, who had flown around 100 missions during the war, this rare assessment of the psychological strain placed upon RAF crews throughout the entire conflict finds an echo in the same director's 1962 drama, The War Lover, which stars Steve McQueen as Buzz Rickson, the B-17 ace whose need for excitement strains his relationship with cautious co-pilot Ed Bolland (Robert Wagner). Although the focus falls on the triangle that develops between the USAF officers and Daphne Caldwell (Shirley Anne Field), the pace quickens during a climactic raid on Leipzig.
During one of his placements, Wooldridge had served under Wing Commander Guy Gibson, who commanded the 617 Squadron on its epic bid to destroy the Möhne, Eder and Sorpe dams in the industrial Ruhr Valley on 16 May 1943. Gibson is memorably played by Richard Todd in Michael Anderson's The Dam Busters (1955), which co-stars Michael Redgrave as Dr Barnes Wallis, the inventor of the 'bouncing bomb', the audacious weapon whose tortuous development delayed the raid for many months, to the frustration of 'Bomber' Harris (Basil Sydney). His presence has proved less contentious down the years than the references to Gibson's black Labrador. Yet the film was nearly snafu'd altogether by Gibson's widow, Eve, who threatened to block its release unless her husband's memoir, Enemy Coast Ahead, was cited as a source alongside Paul Brickhill's bestselling account of Operation Chastise.
The picture lost out in the Special Effects category at the Academy Awards to Mark Robson's similarly themed Korean War saga, The Bridges At Toko-Ri (1954), which teamed William Holden and Grace Kelly in an adaptation of James Michener's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. The expense of staging bombing raids meant that they largely vanished from American screens until Boris Sagal made The 1000 Plane Raid (1969). Unfortunately, the limited budget restricted the spectacle of this familiar story, as risk-taking USAAF colonel Christopher George antagonises lieutenant Ben Murphy and RAF wingco Gary Marshall as he urges his superiors to attempt a daring daylight bombing raid. George crashes his plane on the morning of the mission, but nothing is going to stop him from being part of the show and he hitches a ride on Murphy's crate.
A very different approach to the war emerges in Chris Durlacher's The Haunted Airman (2006), a BBC adaptation of Dennis Wheatley's 1948 novel, The Haunting of Toby Jugg, which stars Robert Pattinson as the flight lieutenant who receives such a severe spinal injury during a sortie over Dresden that aunt Rachael Stirling has him confined at the Llancebach clinic run in a remote corner of Wales by Dr Julian Sands. However, contact with so many other shell-shocked veterans sparks a series of horrific nightmares that push the reclusive Pattinson towards the edge.
Emotions also run high for Flight Lieutenant Douglas Miller (Jeffrey Mundell) in Callum Burn's Lancaster Skies (2019), after he is posted to a new unit shortly after the death of his young brother. A Spitfire ace who had survived the Battle of Britain, Miller lacks the experience to take over a bomber unit from a much-respected commander, while his burning desire to avenge his sibling prompts him into making some questionable decisions.
Mention the name Miller in a wartime context and the thoughts of many will inevitably turn to the innovative bandleader who was lost over the English Channel in December 1944, while serving as a major with the Army Air Forces Band. James Stewart takes the title role in Anthony Mann's The Glenn Miller Story (1954), which would make for a perfect double bill with any of the late and much-lamented Vera Lynn's wartime flagwavers, Philip Brandon's We'll Meet Again (1942), Gordon Wellesley's Rhythm Serenade (1943) or Walter Forde's One Exciting Night (1944). If you're just in the mood for a nostalgic singsong, however, you could try Robert Garafalo's Songs That Won the War (1994) or Sue Mallinson's You Must Remember This: Classic Songs From WWII (2009).
