The Sound Barrier

6/19/2025

“JR” (Sir Ralph Richardson) is a magnate determined to develop an aircraft that can break the speed of sound. This is no mean feat, and with the man becoming all but obsessed with this breakthrough, he engages “Tony” (Nigel Patrick) who just happens to be married to his daughter “Susan” (Ann Todd) to follow in the footsteps of his predecessor, quite literally, “Chris” (Denholm Elliott). What this film does manage is to generate quite a sense of the perilous jeopardy facing these pilots as they pushed their embryonic technology harder and harder, almost feeling their way forward. That is really well illustrated by some archive aerial photography of just about everything from a bi-plane to more advanced jet engines aircraft, and Malcolm Armold delivers a suitably grand and flourishing score