 The Battle Of Britain (1969)
The air is thick with screen stars and 27 restored Spitfires
flown by genuine WWII veterans defending Britain from the rampant
Luftwaffe in the dark days of summer 1940. 
Laurence
Olivier directs operations as Commander-in-chief Hugh Dowding,
whose shrewd strategy with his limited fighter command induced the
Luftwaffe to make fatal errors that led to its destruction.
The aerial sorties involve a vast number of big-name stars that
prove a distraction from the actual story; including Michael Caine,
Robert Shaw, Kenneth More, Christopher Plummer et al who
relentlessly take to the air despite being exhausted.
With such momentous events, Guy Hamilton‘s colourful
big-budget spectacular should have been an epic war movie.
The
visually stunning aerial photography vividly recreates the London
blitz and the fighter dogfights are impressive but Hamilton fails
to get the story off the ground.
The German military advisor for Battle of Britain was
Adolf Galland. A Major-General in the Luftwaffe before he was 30,
Galland recorded 104 kills of Allied aircraft during WWII and was
considered one of the world's greatest fighter pilots.
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