Wednesday, September 26, 2012
The Comic Critic Reviews: The Dam Busters
Back in 1955, The Dam Busters was the biggest movie in Britain. One of my fans reminded me about this film when I asked you for Blockbusters. I’d forgotten nearly all of the details, so I watched it again. The importance of this film, and the book that inspired it, was the accuracy of the facts reported. Some of them were withheld for national security reasons, but the book got nearly all of them right. What few historical flubs there were in the movie (such as a plane crashing on the wrong side of the river) were criticized. You won’t see it played very often on television anymore because of the dog’s name, which is repeated at surprising frequency. You might think that they would just change the name of the dog. But that wouldn’t be the British thing to do. I wonder how it will be dealt with if there’s a remake.