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Angels One Five
The year is 1940 and Pilot Officer T.B. Baird arrives straight out of flight school to join a front line RAF squadron at the height of the Battle of Britain. After an unfortunate start and a drumming down from his commanding officer, Baird must balance the struggle to impress his Group Captain, regain his pride, fit in with his fellow pilots, and survive one of the most intense air battles in history.
Release : | 1954 |
Rating : | 6.4 |
Studio : | Associated British Picture Corporation, Templar Film Studios, |
Crew : | Art Direction, Aerial Camera, |
Cast : | Jack Hawkins Michael Denison John Gregson Cyril Raymond Veronica Hurst |
Genre : | Drama War |
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Save your money for something good and enjoyable
Highly Overrated But Still Good
When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.
This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.
Angels One Five is a low budget rip roaring Britain at war films focusing on the air force and the Battle of Britain.TB 'Septic' Baird (John Gregson) brings in a new plane to the base and promptly crashes it. He then gets involved on a aerial dogfight which we see very little off, more hear the radio transmissions.The squadron is commanded by the stern 'Tiger' Small (Jack Hawkins), who is trying to shape his unit as a team but also understand their frailties.There is nothing much to say about this film apart from I kept thinking it was made in 1942 and surprised to learn that it was actually made in 1952. It looks like a propaganda film made during the war.It is full of stiff upper lip types, subservient working class men and the women are passive such as the radio ops room were full of women's reaction shots. The film was rather dull that celebrates a war that had finished only a few years earlier.The only thing of interest was to see familiar television faces in this film such as Peter Jones, Harry Fowler, Sam Kydd, Dulcie Gray, Russell Hunter etc as well as the line from an officious warden telling someone not to put a light out at the end of the runway and if they need to put on a red light.
forget about what the other guys' high praises of this film. this is actually the worst film ever made about the wwii, period. i fell asleep and nodded off so many times during the viewing. what i saw in it was just a bunch of British guys blah, blah and blah, endless blabbering, joking, saluting, this and that pointless dialog. there's no storyline, no plot and no scenario at all, just a bunch of yoyos who played the British air pilots, they spent more time on the ground instead of in the air to actually do some flying. so many sir this and sir that and saluting, small talks, joking around. there's a woman operator in the operation room kept knitting all the time whenever she was on the scene. this is the worst viewing experience i've ever encountered in my life watching movies. you guys who praised this film should have your brains checked, and your totally untrue and irresponsible reviews had lured me to waste such a long time trying to figure out if there was something i missed during watching, but it just turned out totally a waste of time.
This is a mildly interesting, low budget version of The Battle of Britain. But the fact that it doesn't include any real air action is a huge letdown. The filmmakers borrowed about six Hurricanes from the Portuguese air force, marked them up as British, and filmed them flying past the camera in various ways, taxiing and landing. That's about the extent of real footage for air action. The rest is done with studio shots of men in canopies. Well, not quite all. It's hard to understand why the producers couldn't get footage of air battles, apart from one shot of a half dozen contrails across the sky. Unimpressive. Especially noticeable was the lack of footage of German aircraft. In its place they used some truly embarrassing makeshift replacements, the very worst of which was a drawing of a handful of bombers from below with one fake bomb animated as falling from one of them--truly laughable. And it was used not once, but twice. A couple of models of Messerschmidts on wires were used to show German fighters coming in to attack, and a rather pitiful attempt was made at special effects to depict the downing of German aircraft, seen from the cockpit of British fighters. For a film whose very title indicates battles in the air, it is all very disappointing. The story is workable, if uninspired, leaving just the workings of the air defence system as the main interest in the film. The jaunty dialogue among flyers who in real life would be scared out of their wits was annoying.
"Angels One-Five" would make a wonderful double-feature along with the 1969 classic "The Battle of Britain". While both films have to do with the same battle and the same time period, they both approach it from completely different ways. "Angels" is a personal film--showing one particular unit and especially one brand-new pilot to the group. On the other hand, "The Battle of Britain" tries to do the impossible--encapsulate the entirety of the battle in one film! Plus, "The Battle of Britain" is a stunning film because of its amazing aerial sequences--whereas those in "Angels" are not particularly good, though this really isn't the focus of the film--it's more on people.Baird is a new pilot arriving in a replacement fighter plane. However, due to an accident (which really isn't his fault), he gets in hot water with his immediate supervisor. Then, after shooting down his first plane, he gets in hot water with the base commander! Can Baird manage to pull it all together and make himself useful or will he crash and burn (literally)? The film does a nice job of capturing the look and feel of the war from the point of view of Baird and he's a nice sympathetic character. While you don't learn much about how Britain prevailed, it is a nice portrait of one particular brave but inexperienced man--something rarely seen in war films. Very enjoyable and I actually have little to criticize--it was a top-notch production aside from the air sequences.By the way, if you are an aviation nut like myself, you'll notice that the planes in both movies are completely different--mostly because of the supply of planes available to both productions at that particular time (one film borrowed planes from the Portuguese air force and the other from the Spanish--which were both still flying WWII vintage planes at the time the films were made). For example, in "The Battle of Britain", the only German bombers shown are HE-111s and British are mostly shown flying Spitfires (though many other types of planes were used in the battles). However, "Angels" shows the Brits flying Hurricanes (which is more realistic, as more of these were used during that time than the more modern Spitfires) and you see other German bombers (such as a Ju-88). So, you not only see the war from a different perspective, but entire different aircraft as well!