Starring: Michael Caine, Trevor Howard, Laurence Olivier, Christopher Plummer, Robert Show, Ralph Richardson, Susannah York
Studio: Saltzman/UA/Fox/MGM M107700
Video: 2.35:1 anamorphic/enhanced for 16:9 color, 1080p HD
Audio: English DTS HD Master Audio 5.1, English mono, English DD 5.1 (with Walton soundtrack music), French DD 5.1
Subtitles: English, Spanish, Cantonese, Korean, Captioned
Extras: Smart Menu Technology
Length: 132 minutes
Rating: *****
This is part of a Fox/MGM release of several WWII war movies, all in new Blu-ray transfers. On the strength of this one, even though I’m not a fan of war movies, I’m stimulated to want to see them all. Battle of Britain deals with the period of early 1940, when the Nazis had conquered a good part of continental Europe and were setting their sights on invasion of England. The Royal Air Force was outnumbered four to one and the first German raids destroyed many of the air bases and planes on the ground. The fighter pilots had to deal with untrained recruits, long hours in the air, and dwindling numbers as the Germans seemed to be winning.
The tide eventually began to turn due to the restricted time the German pilots had over England each raid before they ran out of gas, to the greater maneuverability of the British Spitfires, German decisions to send bomber squadrons without any fighter protection, and their efforts to bomb London. The dogfight sequences are well done, and one of the audio options is to hear the special music that Sir William Walton wrote just for some of the air-battle scenes -instead of the machine-gun sound effects and explosions. (The rest of the score was by Ron Goodwin.)
The cast of the film consists of most of the top names in British films of the period. Susannah York is mighty cute in her knickers and shirt from her uniform. There are many scenes from the German side of the conflict, including a Berlin rally with thousands of people. Unfortunately, in the closeups many of the soldiers and crowd appear awfully English, not your proper movie Nazis such as Curt Jurgens plays in the film.
The transfer is terrific and it was good to hear Walton’s score, but there was clearly a degradation of the surround tracks using the standard Dolby surround instead of the lossless DTS HD. Frankly, I had surmised that older films such as this one would not benefit from Blu-ray as much as recent theatrical films. I was wrong – this old Technicolor classic looks much better visually than you could see on any standard DVD transfer.
– John Sunier
