No battle scenes, no fist fights, no arguments, no car chases, no tears -- just a modest and nicely written script by Terence Rattigan directed with skill and restraint by Anthony Asquith and smoothly performed by seasoned British actors and some American performers you've never heard of.
John Mills is a newly minted RAF pilot posted to Halfpenny Field in 1940. It's the Battle of Britain but they don't just throw him into the obsolete Blenheim bombers at the field. They first assign him to a desk because his flying talents are less than minimal.
Mills becomes friends with one of his superiors, Michael Redgrave, and attends Redgrave's wedding party. Redgrave disappears a year later on a mission, leaving behind his widow, Rosamund John, and their child. Everyone takes Redgrave's death with polite matter-of-factness but the fact is wrenching and leaves Mills firmly convinced that marriage has no place in war. This, naturally, aborts his courtship of the cute snub-nosed Renee Asherson.
Next, a horde of American B-17 crews descend upon Halfpenny Field and their brusque manner contrasts with the decorous English politesse. A good chance for the script to go wrong here. Make the Yanks a mob of bragging, drunken, womanizing jackasses who shout when they speak. At first it seems this is the way the story may go. Lieutenant Joe Friselli, Bonar Colleano, appears to fit the template -- but, no. His expansiveness has shrunk to acceptable proportions by the end and he has been thoroughly humanized by the stress and the associated grief of combat.
The American we get to know best is Douglass Montgomery, a bomber pilot who first thrusts his face into Mills' dual-occupant room and looks like the kind of guy who could be a vampire or robot. But he turns out to be quiet, married, and sensitive -- enough so that Redgrave's widow is attracted to him and he to her, though nothing comes of it.
I don't suppose we really need those familiar shots of soaring Spitfires and turret gunners chattering away at the nettlesome enemy fighters. What we witness is the results of those battles on the ground.
And it's a pretty good story, about those results, an ensemble effort that succeeds.
John Mills is a newly minted RAF pilot posted to Halfpenny Field in 1940. It's the Battle of Britain but they don't just throw him into the obsolete Blenheim bombers at the field. They first assign him to a desk because his flying talents are less than minimal.
Mills becomes friends with one of his superiors, Michael Redgrave, and attends Redgrave's wedding party. Redgrave disappears a year later on a mission, leaving behind his widow, Rosamund John, and their child. Everyone takes Redgrave's death with polite matter-of-factness but the fact is wrenching and leaves Mills firmly convinced that marriage has no place in war. This, naturally, aborts his courtship of the cute snub-nosed Renee Asherson.
Next, a horde of American B-17 crews descend upon Halfpenny Field and their brusque manner contrasts with the decorous English politesse. A good chance for the script to go wrong here. Make the Yanks a mob of bragging, drunken, womanizing jackasses who shout when they speak. At first it seems this is the way the story may go. Lieutenant Joe Friselli, Bonar Colleano, appears to fit the template -- but, no. His expansiveness has shrunk to acceptable proportions by the end and he has been thoroughly humanized by the stress and the associated grief of combat.
The American we get to know best is Douglass Montgomery, a bomber pilot who first thrusts his face into Mills' dual-occupant room and looks like the kind of guy who could be a vampire or robot. But he turns out to be quiet, married, and sensitive -- enough so that Redgrave's widow is attracted to him and he to her, though nothing comes of it.
I don't suppose we really need those familiar shots of soaring Spitfires and turret gunners chattering away at the nettlesome enemy fighters. What we witness is the results of those battles on the ground.
And it's a pretty good story, about those results, an ensemble effort that succeeds.