Their Feignest Hour

The Battle of Britain is one of those inane, stiff-upper-lip war flicks that attempt to make up with historical accuracy what they lack in dramatic impact. There are lots of old airplanes, Spitfires, Messerschmitts and the like, and a couple of spectacular dogfights. At film's end, there is even a list of the dead and wounded on both sides, flashed onscreen like a kind of post-game scoreboard. Additionally, an all-star cast is recruited to man the planes and give some faint semblance of life to the statistics. This presents its own problems, however: once they are airborne and covered with goggles and oxygen mask, it is impossible to distinguish between any of the actors. A possible solution for future projects: the flight helmets should have the names of the performers, rather than their characters, stenciled across them. One could then immediately tell the difference between Caine, M.; Plummer, C.; and Shaw, R.

Back on the ground, with little but their own dignity to hide behind, Laurence Olivier, Harry Andrews, Ralph Richardson and Trevor Howard have some good sport impersonating various historical figures who stand about the control room looking grim but determined. There is a thunderous, pseudo-symphonic score to delude the audience into believing that various moments are tense, exciting, exhilarating, tragic, or all of those things at once. It also helps keep people awake during the movie's interminable 2-hr. 10-min. running time, in which it often seems that The Battle of Britain takes longer to watch than it did to wage.

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