Dunkirk

6/10/2019

It may be a phoney war to you, but it's not to all the blokes at sea. Never has been. Dunkirk is directed by Leslie Norman and adapted to screenplay by David Divine and W.P. Lipscomb. It stars John Mills, Richard Attenborough, Bernard Lee, Robert Urquhart, Ray Jackson and Robert Hines. Music is by Malcolm Arnold and cinematography by Paul Beeson. "Dunkirk was a great defeat, and a great miracle. It proved, if it proved anything, that we were alone but undivided. No longer were there fighting men and civilians. There were only people. A nation had been made whole" I think it's safe to say that to fully "get" this version of Dunkirk it helps to have some knowledge of the actual events. This is no standard war film, more so given it's about a defeat and the subsequent extraction of t

12/9/2021

This is an excellent war movie, especially considering it is from 1958. It has aged well. Today’s war movies are more visually impressive, of course, with the special effects that make it seem like you are witnessing the real thing. This version can’t match all that, but except for setting it up politically with newsreel clips and people discussing the “phony” war, this film shows the personal journey of Dunkirk. The home front, soldiers caught behind the rapidly shifting line of battle, and later on the masses of soldiers on the beaches waiting for the civilian “navy” who lent their boats and themselves to the impossible task of getting the trapped army back home to England. The voiceover narration seemed unnecessary at times. I felt they should just get out of the way and show this hu