On the plus side, Battle of Britain is always fun to watch just for its marvelous airplanes. The film is a production marvel. By 1968 real WW2 aircraft were rare and those flown by the Germans even moreso. Combing the continent, producer Saltzman found that the Spanish Air Force still had some of the glass-nosed Heinkel light bombers of the kind used against London. It's rather depressing that he rented them from a Fascist dictatorship that once had ties with Hitler, but with the entire world now crisscrossed with real weapons trade there's not much point in arguing the ethics of such a deal.

Saltzman's best move was to get the cooperation of Adolf Galland, a German ace who ran a club of ex-Luftwaffe pilots. As soon as money changed hands the planes started to appear out of nowhere. When English enthusiasts came forward with Spitfires and Hurricanes stashed in barns, the Battle of Britain was ready to be waged once again.

Special effects are used in some scenes to put hundreds of planes into the sky, and radio controlled models are given a workout here and there to simulate crashes and midair explosions. The Stuka dive bombers are all models, for none of those planes survived. But there's no denying the majesty of seeing the real propellor-driven airplanes in formation, flying into battle like knights of the clouds. The pictorial effect of a sky-ful of zooming aircraft attests to the zeal of the fliers, many of whom were veterans of the battles pictured. How Saltzman kept all those planes fueled and flying, let alone how he secured the permits necessary to re-stage dogfights over England, is a wonder. The high level of thrills starts at the very beginning when a brace of Messerschmitts attacks across the French farmland, flying so low they barely clear the barnyard fences.

With the prodigious resources at its disposal it's a shame that Battle of Britain isn't more exciting on other levels. It suffers from the "star parade" syndrome, with the obvious prestige of the subject matter making it easy to attract superstar actors for tiny parts. Many of the names on the boxcover have only one or two scenes and the effect is to make actor-spotting more interesting than the storyline. Laurence Olivier is on hand for some sombre expository speeches about the desperate situation faced by the defenders. Squadron leaders Michael Caine and Robert Shaw work with underdeveloped characters. The details chosen show that the writers were unfamiliar with war-film clichés: when Caine takes off to fight we cut to his dog staring mournfully after him, a sure sign that his master ain't a-comin' back. Similarly, the predictable bad luck of flyer Ian McShane is used to hurriedly sketch a superficial account of how the Londoners withstood the bombing.

But actor-spotters will have plenty of fun. In one of the air-control rooms we have both The Horrible Dr. Hichcock Robert Flemyng and the man covered with the mystery substance from Quatermass 2, Tom Chatto. Aren't you glad you aren't encumbered with these constant movie associations?

The weakest link is the romance cooked up for the married couple Christopher Plummer and Susannah York, which comes off as a half-hearted tangent. Much better is her frantic reaction to seeing her female comrades killed by the score in a German air raid - just watching her trying to light a cigarette expresses a page's worth of anguished dialogue. There are other highlights: Edward Fox's delightful calm when he parachutes into a backyard, graciously accepting a cigarette from a little boy with a jolly, "Thanks ever so, old chap!"; a group of Polish fighters' undisciplined yammering over the air-to-air radios; Robert Shaw's paternalistic manner and his battle cry, "Don't just stand there, get one UP!"

The unfortunate truth is that when the pilots' faces are mostly covered and their voices filtered through their radios, we can't really tell Michael Caine from Christopher Plummer from Robert Shaw. Only after repeated viewings did Savant learn to recognize the main pilots by their muffled voices and eyebrows. This drawback had people mumbling in frustration in theaters. When planes blow up it's difficult to tell which pilots are gone.

The basics of the story are certainly dramatic enough, but perhaps the details of the defense involve differences of opinion the film doesn't want to address, because the movie never gets past the superficial main points of history. Hitler's disastrous switch of tactics is explained as a consequence of an English raid on Berlin, itself precipitated by an accidental German bombing of London by one plane. That sounds rather like a petty exchange of blows even though it's completely true.

Interestingly, the Luftwaffe side of the story works much better for having no starpower to flaunt. The German esprit de corps at the French villa at the start of hostilities contrasts well with the downhearted misery later on, when glum pilots sit at a table with unused place settings representing their fallen comrades. Fatso Goering is portrayed as a horrible gross idiot in a baby-blue uniform, incapable of dealing with bad news. The Nazi rally back in Berlin is rather hollow, but a scene on the German streets during an air raid is unique for a film of this kind - how many war movies show the allied bombing from the German point of view?

For sheer spectacle, modern CGI just can't replace Battle of Britain's this-is-real thrill of real airplanes flying in real skies. The optical effects are on the poor side, with bad animation for burning planes and some fairly unconvincing night shots of London on fire. And the radio controlled models sometimes show their scale. Those wires that dangle from the crashing planes? Radio antennas, what else?

Anyone seen the superior film Dark Blue World, which has scenes that take place in the Battle of Britain? Shots and outtakes from Battle of Britain were very cleverly adapted for it, through difficult-to-detect CGI work.

Now that the distribution of MGM product is controlled by Sony, a number of discs that were prepared several years ago are finally appearing. It's almost morbid to see a new disc with extras credited to scores of MGM employees, almost all of whom were let go at the end of last Spring.

What happened in 2001 is this: MGM Home Video completed or was about to begin double-disc collector's sets of several high-profile action/war films, in many cases replacing older single-disc versions (like The Good, The Bad and The Ugly) that were starting to show up in remainder bins. But management put the brakes on the special editions because of new deals with giant retail outfits like Wal-Mart. The big retail sellers were given preferential attention because one sales deal could move literally millions of units, eliminating some distributor's cuts along with extra warehousing and shipping. Just as the special editions were being put into the works, MGM discovered that sales for older plain-wrap discs like The Good, The Bad and The Ugly suddenly sold hundreds of thousands of copies at the discount prices these giant outlets could offer. Why spend a lot of money on expensive special editions when the old discs were suddenly so profitable?

Region 1 Special Editions for Battle of Britain, A Bridge too Far were all finished and shelved, along with sets for titles like The Great Escape, and RoboCop that were held back for a shorter period of time. They came out in Region 2 almost immediately.

The Collector's Edition of Battle of Britain is a handsome and improved presentation that will be of particular interest to WW2 buffs. Savant remembers seeing a pricey1969 coffee table book with many color photos from the film shoot, and always wondered where they got all the airplanes to put together such a big production.

Disc one has the feature, which is said to be a newer transfer than the older disc, with a corrected Winston Churchill quote and a correct ending music cue (I'm taking this on faith). Also, several scenes on the first disc were subtitled that weren't in the original theatrical release, and these are said to have been changed. This pressing also lists two audio tracks in addition to a commentary with director Guy Hamilton (Goldfinger), aerial sequence director Bernard Williams and war historian Paul Annett. A third track is said to have the alternate music score by William Walton that in most territories was replaced by Ron Goodwin's 'tally-ho' flavored themes. Savant listened to the two scores and found that the music, at least where I checked, was identical. Walton's special battle in the sky concerto plays over an extended sequence near the end and was retained in both versions. (NOTE .. I have to say I'm not sure about this ... perhaps there are three tracks and I'm only finding two ... I may be able to play the disc soon for a person in a position to give me definitive answers.)

Disc two adds a couple of more hours of good featurettes. Michael Caine hosts the English TV special The Battle for the Battle of Britain, which starts with a 1969 London street interview section in which a number of passersby can't recall what the Battle of Britain was. Caine takes us through the history of the summer and fall of 1940 and then we see at least half an hour of behind-the-scenes footage of planes being rounded up, put in flying condition and assembled as a cinematic air force. Politics gets involved when the main German advisor has a difference of opinion on the conduct of the Luftwaffe. But nobody seems concerned that the German aircraft are easily acquired from the Spanish Air Force - Franco's Fascists inherited them from the Nazis way back in the Spanish Civil War.

Three MGM-produced featurettes begin with a new making-of docu with good interviews from technicians, crew members and actors -- Susannah York appears in an odd interview that makes her look like she's sitting up in her bed after a night's sleep. A second and rather overlong docu will probably appeal mostly to aviation fans - it's about the logistical difficulties in coordinating Saltzman's 'air force' for shooting. One of the principal interviewees is a WW2 buff that happened to be associated with films and had experience as an air-traffic controller. A third interview piece is a thoughtful testimony from an old surviving pilot of the battle, and how he and hundreds of other 20 year-old boys tackled the job of opposing Goering's seasoned combat pilots.

A fourth extra is a montage of production stills set to music. The packaging is a glossy unfolding sleeve with handsome color design. This Battle of Britain disc will probably do well. I remember liking the picture when it was new but not being excited about it - at the time it was considered an expensive non-hit.

On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor, Battle of Britain rates:
Movie: Good
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements: 1969 British television show, new featurettes, still montage
Packaging: Keep case
Reviewed: May 20, 2003