Tue 14sep2010 on BBC 2: Battle of Britain "First Light" Docudrama...

[Stratofreighter]

Just a heads up for Tuesday 14sep2010 at 21.00 hrs/22.00 hrs. CET on BBC Two,

see
http://www.pprune.org/military-aircrew/421804-89-year-old-boy.html
and
Geoffrey Wellum: The terrible beauty of flying a Spitfire at the age of 18 - Telegraph (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/world-war-2/battle-of-britain/7992268/Geoffrey-Wellum-The-terrible-beauty-of-flying-a-Spitfire-at-the-age-of-18.html) for more details.


Video-trailer: Lion Television . First Light (http://www.liontv.com/London/Productions/First-Light) .
and also
YouTube - Battle of Britain - First Light 06.09.10 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x30MpS5mMQc) .

[JEM60]

I thought it was good. Having read the excellent book, I felt the film brought across the fears, elation and pathos that Mr. Wellum conveyed so well his book.
For those amongst us who have not read his book, I would say that if you only read one book about the Battle of Britain, make it this one.

[POBJOY]

Suggest
Willingness to die " Brian Kingcome "
and
Smoke Trails in the Sky " Tony Bartley"
If you want to know what it was like with 92 Squadron at Biggin and before.
Pobjoy

[forget]

It's Brian Kingcome, without a 'b'.

Brian Kingcome - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Kingcome)

[treadigraph]

Enjoyed TV programme as well - if Philip Whiteman reads this thread, do please pass on congrats to your brother! Very good and on a tight budget!

"First Light" off the bookshelf and in the "to read" pile - it's been a little while.

Second Pobjoy's suggestions and I'd also recommend "Fly For Your Life" by Larry Forrester about Bob Stanford-Tuck - get the unabridged version though.

[Atcham Tower]

And don't forget Roger Hall's Clouds of Fear, a very overlooked Battle of Britain memoir published in 1975. It deserves a reprint.

[rlsbutler]

The book is brilliant. The best thing about the film was Wellum's voice-over.

Nor being old enough to know how it was then, but old enough to be a boring old, I thought the docudrama was a failure. Treadigraph refers in a kindly way to the tight budget. The credits went too fast to be sure, but I could see no sign of a military/flying advisor which I think the makers ought to have considered and must have deemed too expensive.

So many solecisms. The one that really registered with me was in a short scene where our hero is in the rain talking to another pilot. Behind them is a deserted Spitfire with the canopy right back. That would have been unthinkable in 1941 – no erks ? no cockpit covers ? By the time the film is being made, that aircraft has become fantastically expensive. So our minds go straight to the figure just off camera holding the hosepipe over the actors - and the dramatic thread is lost.

Did I say “dramatic thread” ? The film-maker was simply making the wrong film. All the squadron scenes seemed to have a dreary sepia wash and their actors seemed to be on Mogadon. Our hero usually looked as if he had just been fondled by the captain of his school’s First XV and he did not know what to do about it. The film-maker did not understand that the fear and the introversion, that Wellum described so well, was a subtext to the brightness and aggression essential to a top-scoring fighter squadron.

Was it class prejudice that had him keep our hero dependent on and just a little bit subservient to his ground crew ? It was as if our view of the soppy toff hero needed to be grounded on “real” people.

The love story was just a waste of time, a case of the film-maker being too unimaginative to leave it out or to understand why Wellum effectively left it out of his book. It went on long enough for some “dramatic tension” to develop - as to whether or not the film-maker was about to be crass enough to give us a full-blown sex scene.

It seems to me unlikely that the film-maker read the book. How otherwise does he get so wrong the scene where our hero’s father expresses his pride in his son ? Never mind that the sepia returned, to make the boy’s overstocked bedroom look as if it had not seen daylight for a hundred years. The proud father is played as a bewildered retired tobacconist or someone equally dreary. My paper-back has a photo that tells a much happier story, of two men in uniform proud of themselves and of each other.

That same photo shows Wellum in August 1941 as a Flight Lieutenant, naturally, as he has been flying for two years or so and was still alive. If there had been a service adviser, our hero would not have retained his Pilot Officer’s braid throughout the film.

If the film-maker was short of money, I hope he did not spend much on the full colour flying scenes. Some of it was just lovely, some of it was deliberately bewildering, but scarcely any of it was netted into the docudrama or properly explained. There was so much that the viewer could have learned from this film and did not, and which Wellum explained so graphically in his text.

For me, the film would have been ten times as good if it had really reconstructed the set piece story called Chapter 9 “Convoy Pair” and done nothing else.

Even what the film-maker did give us would have been much more coherent and satisfying if he had just let Wellum read his story and edited the pictures to match.

[radar101]

On the 56 Sqn side:

Geoffrey Page " Shot Down in Flames" - one of the original guinea pigs

Barry Sutton "The Way of a Pilot" also badly burt - just reprinted as "Fighter Boy, Life as a Battle of Britain Pilot"

[Hipper]

The open cockpit in the rain caught my eye too, as did the kind of stock relationships, such as the ground crew, the father and lover. I'm not from those times so I don't know how much these things ring true. Presumably those that adapted it for the screen decided that's how it had to be to make a complete film and I assume Wellum had some say in it.

You have to remember that this film was not made for experts but your typical, perhaps slightly discerning, viewer. Corners have to be cut, love stories introduced and so on. Having Wellum narrate was a clever device that added to my thoughts about the whole theme - this old man, look what he did when he was young.

I've read the book so I didn't learn anything from this film, but on the whole it worked well for me. The ninety minutes wizzed by.

[Philip Whiteman]

Came across this thread sometime after it had developed. Everbody is entitled to their own opinion, but I must set a couple of things straight.

risbutler: the film maker – my brother – most certainly did read the book and it took him several years of planning to secure the rights and get the production under way.

When you assume some kind of 'class prejudice' on the part of the film maker (actually producer, director and co-writer) you are talking through your hat, old boy.

There was a historical advisor; one Wellum, G. At the press screening in September he told the BAFTA audience that the film was the "most authentic portrayal of the Battle of Britain I have seen" – a view he confirmed in person when I had lunch with him afterwards.

[rlsbutler]

Mr Whiteman

I was wrong to say “It seems to me unlikely that the film-maker read the book.” In truth it is almost inconceivable that he had not. What I have said elsewhere stands. Not having read the book was an easier explanation for the film-maker’s inventions than whatever you might suggest instead.

I did not assume class prejudice. I was raising a possible explanation for a characterisation that simply did not ring true. It is not in the book. Being a generation or two later than Wellum I can report, as a pilot seen off on many hundreds of sorties, that the relationship played out in the film would have been uncomfortable and distracting for that pilot as for me. When a sortie is being launched, all parties have a job to focus on. At another time, when nothing much is happening, the pilot might well go down to the flight line and see how the chaps are getting on. Or one might take some time in the cockpit, alone, to brush up one’s cockpit drills.

While the aircrew/groundcrew relationship was uncalled-for, the film-maker or the actors made almost nothing of the dependence and guarded affection between Wellum and particular fellow pilots, as well as generally within the squadron, that Wellum described in his book. There were glum scenes to foretell future losses, which missed the point entirely. Wellum comes out of the book as a bit of a joker, even if the jokes were not always appreciated; the young hero of the film was just wooden.

Please excuse my persisting with the catch-all expression of film-maker. I know full well there are more involved in making a film even than those trades you mentioned. I also quite understand how difficult it is to put a film together and how, for all the constraints and compromises in funding, script, locations and casting, the film-maker gets to the point where he must make the film now or not at all.

What you say about Wellum may be intended to trump my contribution entirely. I am reminded of the truisms about a lady – that, if you are a gentleman, you will believe a lady can do no wrong … but that, if you are a gentleman, you will not take a lady’s name in vain. (If you are a film buff, you may remember this, with all its irony, from “The Go-Between”). Just so, Wellum is a gallant figure who can do no wrong.

I would not dream of blaming him for the practical solecisms several of us have remarked on. I have just remembered another one: I expect, if you had asked him, Wellum would agree that, when our hero had chased his Ju88 into the clag over the North Sea, the one good glimpse we viewers got of the target proved it to be an He111.

Wellum may have had no difficulty being generous about all the work that went into the film. You have not quoted him saying that the film rendered faithfully what he wrote so truthfully in the first place.

[PontiusPilote]

I very rarely watch TV, but seeing this prog' trailed stirred me into action, especially as the subject, and author of that wonderful book, was there to supervise proceedings. I don't agree with any of Risbutlers criticisms whatsoever, and found this lovely programme sympathetically made and close to the essence of the book, as well it might since Wellum was so closely involved. Perhaps we were viewing different programmes.

How very nice to see something made that does NOT revolve around yet another nerdy latter-day 'historian' hellbent on making a name for themselves by 're-interpretting' historic events that they were not present to witness. First Light avoided that trap by sticking closely to the story as written.

There were several other features on TV to mark the BoB anniverary, but First Light stood-out head and shoulders. Well done to all the team. :ok: