SPITFIRE
UK, 2018, 99 minutes, Colour.
Directed by David Fairhead, Ant Palmer.
A documentary tribute to the plane which is credited with winning the Battle of Britain and contributing to the Allied victory in World War II.
The film opens and closes with beautiful sequences of the Spitfire and flight, over the British countryside, through the clouds, a rather rapturous framework for this documentary.
There is some history of the Spitfire, the work of R.J.Mitchell, aircraft designer with vision, the team of experts who worked with him developing aircraft during the 1920s and 1930s. There are some interesting clips from the 1943 feature film about Mitchell, The First of the Few, with Leslie Howard (called Spitfire in the US). The Spitfire emerged around 1937, with continual work on it until it entered the war, especially with the Battle of Britain. In fact, there were 24 machs of the Spitfire, the film touching on these towards the end, quite extraordinary developments for combating the German aircraft. The Spitfire was withdrawn from service in 1957 with the emergence of planes, jets.
Many of those commenting throughout the film praise the ingenuity and innovation of the Spitfire, praising it as the most beautiful of planes. One man mentions that it is the most precious of flying machines except for the spacecraft which brought Armstrong and the astronauts back from the moon. There were 22,000 Spitfires produced.
There is language about the Spitfire as an icon, comment that the aura about the Spitfire was developed after the end of the war. In many ways this is a eulogy of the Spitfire, testimonies of the flyers, many clips from contemporary footage from World War II.
There is also an outline of the role of the Spitfire during World War II, the initial flights, conflict with the Germans and their aerial developments, a focus particularly on the battle for Malta, the role of the Spitfires on D-Day?.
And the story is told by quite a number of veterans, all of them worth listening to, interesting and often genial personalities, their love of flying, the exhilaration of flying the Spitfires, some detailed description of confrontations in the air, pursuits, bombings. And some of the memoirs of the Flyers are very vivid, particularly a story about flying to Malta from Gibraltar, losing the lead plane, the pilot not knowing where he was and making the decision to fly back to Gibraltar with the risk of the Allied guns misinterpreting his presence. There is a tribute to the saving of Malta. There are also stories about the night before D-Day?, the number of flights over the channel and back on 6 June 1944, the bombings and fears about the Germans having a secret weapon.
While the film is particularly male-oriented, there is a strong presence of women in this documentary, some of the women who flew planes, including the hundred-year-old Mary Ellis who flew over 400 planes to British airfields, who inscribed her name on one of them and is invited to write her name over 70 years later on the same plane. There are also the women who are expert in tracking the flights, helping in the war rooms with the maps and indicating the planes and their presence.
The narration is by actor, Charles Dance, rather solemn for the occasion, at times a touch sepulchral.
For those who love planes, an obvious must. For those who are not planespotters, nevertheless a very interesting documentary. For those who have a passion about World War II, the role of Britain, touches of nostalgia and patriotism, they won't be disappointed.
