![]() |
Richard Todd leads the most famous bombing raid ever in The Dam Busters |
Director: Michael Anderson
Cast: Richard Todd (Wing Commander Guy Gibson), Michael
Redgrave (Barnes Wallis), Ursula Jeans (Mrs Molly Wallis), Basil Sydney (Air
Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris), Patrick Barr (Captain Joseph “Mutt” Summers),
Ernest Clark (Air Vice-Marshal Ralph Cochrane), Derek Farr (Group Captain John
Whitworth)
It’s famous for its stirring theme. Those bouncing bombs.
The fact that George Lucas, while still completing the special effects, spliced
in the final bombing runs into his first cut of Star Wars. But where does The
Dam Busters sit today as a film?
In 1942, aeronautical engineer Barnes Wallis (Michael
Redgrave) is working on a plan to take out the German dams on the Ruhr, a
strike that could cripple German heavy industry. Conventional bombs can never
cause enough damage, and the dams are protected from torpedo attack. So Wallis
has a crazy idea – to build a bouncing bomb that will skim the top of the
water, hitting the dam, with its top spin taking it down to the base of the dam
for detonation. It’s a crazy idea – but it finally wins favour, with Wing
Commander Guy Gibson (played by real-life World War II paratroop veteran
Richard Todd) given command over an operation that promises to be risky and
dangerous beyond belief.
The Dam Busters
doesn’t really have much in the way of plot, being instead a rather
straight-forward, even dry in places, run through of the mechanics involved in
planning the operation and overcoming the engineering difficulties that stood
in the way of the operation. Throw into that our heroes overcoming the various
barriers and administrative hiccups put in the way by the authorities and you
have a pretty standard story of British pluck and ingenuity coming up with a
left-field solution that saves the day. (Though Barnes Wallis denied he faced
any bureaucratic opposition like the type his fictional counterpart struggled
with for most of the first forty minutes).
Of course, the film is also yet another advert for the “special
nature” of the British under fire, a national sense of inherent destiny and
ingenuity that has frequently done as much harm as good. Made in co-operation
with the RAF, it’s also a striking tribute to the stiff-upper-lipped bravery of
the RAF during the war, and the sense of sacrifice involved in flying these
deadly missions.
In fact it’s striking that the film’s final few notes are
not of triumph after the completion of the operation, and the destruction of
the two dams, but instead the grim burden of surviving. After 56 men have been
killed on the mission, Barnes Wallis regrets even coming up with the idea. The
final action we see Gibson performing is walking quietly back to his office to
write letters to the families. Anderson’s camera pans over the empty breakfast
table, set for pilots who have not returned, and then over the abandoned
belongings of the dead still left exactly where they last placed them. It’s
sombre, sad and reflective – and probably the most adult moment of the film.
Because other than that, it’s a jolly charge around solving
problems with a combination of Blue Peter
invention, mixed with a sort of Top Gear
can-do spirit. Michael Redgrave is very good as the calm, professorial,
dedicated Barnes Wallis, constantly returning to the drawing board with a
reserved, eccentric resignation to fix yet another prototype. The sequences
showing the engineering problems being met and overcome are interesting and
told with a quirky charm that makes them perhaps one of the best examples of such
things made in film.
The material covering the building of the flight team is far
duller by comparison, despite a vast array of soon-to-be-more-famous actors
(George Baker, Nigel Stock, Robert Shaw etc.) doing their very best “the few”
performances. Basically, generally watching a series of pilots working out the
altitude they need to fly at in training situations is just not as interesting
as watching the boffins figure out how to make the impossible possible.
The flight parts of the film really come into their own in
the final act that covers the operation itself. An impressive display of
special effects at the time (even if they look a bit dated now), the attack is
dramatic, stirring and also costly (the film allows beats of tragedy as
assorted crews are killed over the course of the mission). The attack is
brilliantly constructed and shot by Michael Anderson, and very accurate to the
process of the actual operation, in a way that fits in with the air of tribute
that hangs around the whole film.
All this reverence to those carrying means that we overlook
completely the lasting impact of the mission. “Bomber” Harris (here played with
a solid gruffness by Basil Sydney) later considered the entire operation a
waste of time, money and resources. Barnes Wallis begged for a follow-up to
hammer home the advantage, but it never happened. The Germans soon restored
their economic capability in the Ruhr. Similarly, today it’s more acknowledged
the attack killed over 600 civilians and over 1000 Russian POWs working as
slave labour in the Ruhr. Such things are of course ignored – the film even
throws in a moment of watching German workers flee to safety from a flooding
factory floor, to avoid showing any deaths on the ground.
And of course, the film is also (unluckily) infamous for the
name of Gibson’s dog. I won’t mention the name, but when I say the dog is black
and ask you to think of the worst possible word to use as its name and you’ve
got it. It does mean the word gets bandied about a fair bit, not least when it
is used as a codeword for a successful strike against the dam. Try and tune it
out.
The Dam Busters is
a solid and impressive piece of film-making, even if it is low on plot and more
high on documentary ticking-off of facts. But it’s also reverential, a little
dry and dated and avoids looking at anything involved in the mission with
anything approaching a critical eye. With its unquestioning praise for “the
British way”, it’s also a film that reassures those watching it that there is
no need for real analysis and insight into the state of our nation, but instead
that we should buckle down and trust in the divine guiding hand that always
pulls Britain’s irons out of the fire.
No comments:
Post a comment