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Sometimes, the timing of an article can be fortuitous.
When I first pitched this article, it was based on the fact that Battle of Britain Day and the anniversary of Operation Market Garden were both this week, on the 15th and 17th September respectively. I had long thought of writing an article delving into how the two classic war movies Battle of Britain and A Bridge Too Far complement each other. The calendar gave a compelling command I could no longer refuse; it must be now.
The day my pitch was accepted, however, my father was taken into hospital.
We watch and rewatch, not just because they are great films, but because they are a thread between generations
Sometimes, the timing can completely change the piece you’re about to write. For a certain type of man, films like Battle of Britain and A Bridge Too Far — the kind of movie you’d find repeated on Sunday afternoon and settle down to watch with your father — is more than just a way of getting out of your weekend jobs. It a uniquely British phenomenon, and a widely observed one. Rob Hutton, of this parish, has a podcast called War Movie Theatre where he and Duncan Weldon discuss old war films that — as an early episode made clear — you would watch on a Sunday afternoon with your dad. Al Murray’s first book written as himself, rather than as the Pub Landlord, was called Watching War Films with My Dad.
We watch and rewatch, not just because they are great films, but because they are a thread between generations — we watch them side by side, often multiple times, only breaking the silence to repeat favourite quotes.
So it is with me; Battle of Britain is my favourite film, it is my father’s favourite film and it was my grandfather’s favourite film. We have watched it so many times that when I tried to watch it with an ex-girlfriend who was in the RAF, she paused it within the first ten minutes and told me to stop repeating the lines or leave her to watch it in peace.
Why pair it with A Bridge too Far? I have always argued that, tonally, they are wonderfully synchronised, and watched together offer an understanding of what the war did to the British psyche.
Battle of Britain starts with Britain at its lowest ebb — with a haunting shot of the BEF’s equipment abandoned on the deserted beaches of Dunkirk. The Battle of France is over; the Battle of Britain is about to begin. The film then waits around as Hitler holidays in Paris, but really gets going — much like the battle itself — on Eagle Day. As the Luftwaffe strikes relentlessly and the RAF is stretched to breaking point, the film becomes a sobering portrait of brutality, attrition and endurance. Playing Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, Laurence Olivier puts the situation with a heavy air:
Gentlemen, you’re missing the essential truth. We’re short of 200 pilots. Those we have are tired, strained, and all overdue for relief. We’re fighting for survival. Losing. We don’t need a big wing or a small wing. We need pilots. And a miracle.
The miracle comes. A lost German bomber accidentally drops its bombs on London, the RAF retaliates by dropping bombs on Berlin, and Hitler orders London razed. The let up takes the pressure off the RAF’s airfields and means German fighters have only enough fuel for ten minutes’ combat. Through a relentless series of dizzying dogfights, most of which were filmed with original Spitfires and Hurricanes (although the German aircraft were mostly later Spanish-built versions), the tide slowly turns, culminating on the 15th September.
The next day, across the Channel, German forces withdraw from the coast and Göring leaves the front. The pilots are shown waiting anxiously, exhaustedly, for another scramble call that never comes. Dowding steps out of his office to look up at a clear blue sky; the strings swell, and so do the tears in my eyes.
The hopeful mood that Battle of Britain ends on has, by the time A Bridge Too Far begins, become one of outright confidence. In the four years since that desperate stand, Britain and her allies have not only held off the Luftwaffe but driven Axis forces out of North Africa, fought up the Italian peninsula, executed the Normandy landings, and now loom on the doorstep of Germany itself. They are, in a word, winning.
The soaring score, the sheer amount of hardware, the acting; all communicate a sense of unstoppable momentum. As Olivier’s Dowding was played with a stern pensiveness, Dirk Bogarde’s Boy Browning strides through scenes with an almost arrogant swagger. Concerns — the distance from landing zones to Arnhem, the presence of German tanks, murky intelligence reports about the quality of troops in the area — are brushed aside breezily, as mere trivialities. Those who do voice concerns find themselves sidelined, their warnings drowned out by the rush of imminent, inevitable, victory.
But those concerns soon prove to be right. The landing zones are too far from Arnhem, there are German tanks, and as well as line of communication troops there are SS formations in the area. One by one things fall apart, and as the gravity of the situation begins to tell, the boyish, almost Bigglesworthian, “cor what a load of japes war is” energy dissipates, and the brutality, attrition and endurance of Battle of Britain returns. But there is no moment of hope as the camera swings towards the sky; the Poles are massacred, the Brits retreat, the Germans move in. Abide With Me starts to swell, and so do the tears in my eyes.
The war would not end for another year. As is regularly pointed out by the aforementioned Al Murray and James Holland on their podcast We Have Ways of Making You Talk, Britain needed the war to end then and there if it was to maintain a meaningful role in the post-war world. Instead, what happened was another year of relentless grinding into the Third Reich, sapping what little remaining strength the British had, whilst increasing the overlordship of the Americans.
Here, I was going to alight on what these films tell us about how the war affected the British psyche. I was going to tell you how Battle of Britain tells the noble story of heroic self-sacrifice that is the moral crucible in which Britain’s identity is forged. I was going to tell you how A Bridge Too Far prepares us for the monumental costs of that self-sacrifice; the collapse of the Empire and our national pride, the loss of our role in the world, and decades of humiliation as a second-rate nation.
They are an opportunity for me to spend a Saturday afternoon with my father, watching our favourite film together
But sometimes, the timing can completely change the piece you’re about to write. What is important to me now is not what these films tell us, but what these films are. They are an opportunity for me to spend a Saturday afternoon with my father, watching our favourite film together; a film I never got the chance to watch with my grandfather, and I pray to God my children will be able to.
But, today, as I finish this piece, he is out of hospital. The piece swells, and so do the tears in my eyes. I’m going to go and put Battle of Britain on.
