REACH FOR THE SKY
UK, 1956, 135 minutes, Black and white.
Kenneth More, Muriel Pavlow, Lee Patterson, Alexander Knox, Dorothy Alison, Sydney Tafler, Jack Watling, Nigel Green.
Directed by Lewis Gilbert.
Reach for the Sky is based on the biography by Paul Brickhill, author of The Dam Busters.
He tells the story, a highly inspirational and motivational story, of pilot Douglas Bader who lost both legs in an accident in 1931. At the outbreak of World War Two, he was determined to become a pilot. He succeeded and became a significant leader in attacks from Britain during World War Two.
Kenneth More is at home in the role of Bader. The film presents him in a heroic light, the type of war film that was being made as tribute to personnel during the 1950s. Muriel Pavlow is his wife.
The film shows the background of his personality, his accident, his marriage, his recuperation as well as his determination in becoming a pilot again as well as war action.
The film has a very strong British cast and it was directed by Lewis Gilbert who was beginning a long career at this particular stage. He had made some small-budget action films like Albert RN, The Sea Shall Not Have Them. He was to go on at this time to make The Admirable Crichton and Carve Her Name with Pride. Later he would actually make three of the James Bond films: You Only Live Twice, The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker. Versatile, he also made the very popular Educating Rita and Shirley Valentine.
1. The tone of the title and its meaning? An ideal, the fulfilment for Douglas Bader?
2. How successful was the film overall - as biography, as the portrait of a hero, as a war story? Which predominated in the production?
3. How successful was the screenplay in presenting Bader as a character, the crises of his life, the quality of his recovery, in portraying the war and its importance for Bader, the escape sequences, the nobility in heroism at the end? Was the film too episodic or did it build up its character and situations well?
4. What kind of person was Douglas Bader? An ordinary person? Kenneth More's jovial portrait? Audience sympathy for him? Was it wholehearted or mixed? The English type of gentleman? The show off? His capacity for flying and the exhilaration of flying? The impact of the accident, physical and psychological? How well portrayed was this, in which sequences? Bader's strengths to cope? His response to the hospital treatment and personnel? How did he respond so lovingly to Thelma? The quality of their marriage, her support of him? His reaction to the legalism for his role in the war? The importance for him of the battle of Britain? His enterprise with his limitations? Was his humour too exaggerated? too jovial? The crisis of his bailing out? Yet his survival in the war? capture in Colditz The sense of achievement at the end of this portrayal of his character? How admirable a man was he? How encouraging a man was he?
5. How well did the film portray Britain of the thirties and forties? Britain at war? The fact that the film was made in the fifties? Britain's looking back in golden times and heroic times?
6. Was Thelma an attractive heroine? The difficulties of her loving Douglas Bader? Did the film explore her love for him and her support for him?
7. The hospital sequences, the nurse, people's reactions to Bader in his attempts to rehabilitate himself?
8. Were Air Force personal presented convincingly or were they merely conventional characters?
9. How effective were the war sequences in themselves? British attitudes towards themselves in the war? The war in relationship to Bader's achievement?
10. The quality of the aerial photography and the tone that this give to the film?
11. How important are morale boosting films like this? For a nation? for world audiences? For encouragement for disabled people who must learn to struggle?
