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Leslie Norman
All titles on these pages are official releases released in UK & Europe unless stated.
If you have photos of this release and would like to share them here just e-mail me @ ihuppert5@aol.com and I will put them up.
Screen legends, Richard Attenborough and John Mills lead a sterling cast in this poignant dramatisation of Operation Dynamo - one of the most significant events of WW II where the British army attempt to rescue their own forces from the coast of occupied France in 1940.
Details of the film are on the back cover photographed above. No subtitles on this release which seems a bit shortsighted as that's a big chunk of the market gone.
What else can I tell you about the film off the top of my head? Well, it was directed by the late Barry Norman's father, Leslie. And the beach scenes if I remember correctly were filmed at Camber Sands near Rye, Sussex. The producer, Michael Balcon was the grandfather of Daniel Day Lewis and the guru to all things Ealing. Crikey, would there have been a British Cinema if his fingerprints weren't all over it?
I love this film. Black and white British Cinema of the 1950s at its best. I wonder if the new 'Dunkirk' will be as good? Certainly special effects have come on since the 1950s but does that make a film better? Of course John Mills, Richard Attenborough and Bernard Lee aren't in the new one so how do you replace them?
There will never be anyone like them.
Incidentally, in my opinion Leslie Norman is a seriously underrated film bod. If my memory serves me right he was the producer of 'The Cruel Sea' but more than that he directed an almost forgotten but eerily compelling film, 'The Night My Number Came Up'. I think it was Lady Attenborough's last film role and has a stellar British cast; the story is so grippingly haunting and directed with such deftness and quiteness it deserves at the very least to be considered a cult classic.
July 24th 2017: just caught this: in his last ever article (I think it's at Radio Times online - not on the Dvd as a special feature or anything), Barry Norman talks about the making of 'Dunkirk'. Fascinating read. He puts it far better than me when he talks about the story as basically about two mens' war: John Mills with his men trying to get back to England and Richard Attenborough's businessman doing rather well from the war and how he reacts to Dunkirk. Two disparate men and how events tie them together.
Really clever stuff.
I'll add trivia on the movie as and when I find it as like I say I've always loved this movie and deserves to be seen by as many people as possible. Presently, it's not considered in the same reverant way as say a 'Dam Busters' or 'Reach For The Sky' but really deserves to be. Hopefully I can help in my very small way...
It was one of Ealing's longest films.
May 2020: A few back in stock. 'New - Sealed'.
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