coolantic Yes, if ever there was a case of life trumping art, this was it. O.K. we all know NOW that Chucky Egg actually broke the sound barrier in 1947, but apparently this was not widely publicized at the time. Having said that, this film was only ever going to be a fiction. And nothing dates quicker than yesterday's view of tomorrow. Not one of David Lean's best, it features the dashing Nigel Patrick as a test pilot avidly pursuing the breaking of the titular maguffin. Having conveniently married Susan Ridgefield ( an oddly unattractive Anne Todd) he is enthusiastically supported in his quest by her father John Ridgefield, a rough-as-a-bear's-bum Yorkshire plane builder, played by Ralph Richardson, with a dodgy accent. Unfortunately, our Nigel gets killed and it is left to his pal Phil, played by the excellent, but underrated John Justin, to complete the job. Knowing the history you do wonder why they bothered even making this film. Apart from featuring some wonderful British jets of the fifties, the technical stuff is pretty basic, and the ultimate solution to the problem i.e. reversing the aircraft controls , is hardly believable. However, a nice humorous touch comes right at the end when Phil's wife (beautiful Dinah Sheridan) bothers him fussily about the children's new coats, just when he wants to tell her what he's achieved! In another scene, the film is prophetic. When questioning her father regarding the reason for wanting the break the sound barrier she mentions that an airliner will be able to fly to New York in 3 hours. He says "Two." She responds. "So a few, very rich people will be able to spend the weekend in New York!" Remind you of a particular Anglo-French plane? Anyway, cinema rarely sticks to the facts. I mean the Brits could try claiming that they obtained the German Enigma coding machine from a captured U-boat. But Hollywood says different!

larrysez Totally made up fantasy about how the sound barrier was initially broken by some English guy. It mashes up the true death of test pilot Geoffrey de Havilland in 1946 with a made-up subsequent crash and a made-up subsequent pioneering blast through the sound barrier, and it was written and filmed more than enough years after Chuck Yeager had really broken the sound barrier (after de Havilland's crash) to be a pretty outrageously and fictitiously an expression of British nationalism.All of the characters are very posh and very English (and of course lily white), with the exception of an irascible Scottish technical genius who may well have been the prototype for "Scotty" in the Star Trek franchise. Just the sort of movie you'd expect from postwar Britain when they thought they'd still be ruling the world for ever and ever, even as the empire was already disintegrating. Pretty good acting, but the characters are all a little too refined, too restrained, and too polite, even as the rather unscrupulous head of the aircraft company in the movie gets a pass on getting test pilots killed in the interest of being the first guy to build a supersonic plane.

writers_reign It's a fact universally acknowledge that some writers work better with some directors than others and vice versa. Working separately director Marcel Carne made one great film (Hotel du Nord), several decent films (Therese Raquin, Julia ou le cle des songes) and several ho-hum entries; also working separately Jacques Prevert fared slightly better writing Le Crime de Monsieur Lange, Les Amants de Verone, Voyage Surprise, Un oiseau rare among other but TOGETHER they made seven of the most distinguished movies in French cinema and if you want me to list them you clearly stepped in here to get out of the rain, the Multiplex is three blocks down. Terry Rattigan worked best with Puffin Asquith and David Lean with Noel Coward yet here we have Lean directing a Rattigan screenplay. You can see Lean's thinking; he didn't want to go through life riding on the coat-tails of Coward, what Rattigan didn't know about constructing a play could fit in an eye-dropper and still leave room for an eight-to-one martini, he'd served in the RAF during the war and had written one of the two finest British war films actually produced during the war, The Way To The Stars - the other was In Which We Serve, written, produced, starring and co-directed by Coward with Lean. On paper this was great, get some stats about supersonic flight, turn them over to Terry and let him flesh them out and humanise them. Mostly it's good but it COULD have been great - think Sinatra and Lawrence Welk; put these two together and you'll get an album that neither has to be ashamed of but team Sinatra with Billy May, Gordon Jenkins, Nelson Riddle and we're talking Hall of Fame. So: We have a lyrical opening sequence in which a plane is 'stooging' about over the channel with the cliffs of Dover prominent; there's a carefree, buoyant, waltz-time feel that sets us up for the revelation that this is wartime. Pilot John Justin goes into a dive and when the plane begins to shudder he finds it difficult to throttle back, an experience he discusses with chum Nigel Patrick back on the aerodrome; Patrick, however, is in love and not interested but the object of his affection, Ann Todd, just happens to be the daughter of a leading aircraft manufacturer, Ralph Richardson, who offers Patrick a job as test pilot after the war. Rattigan gets this over economically so that we can cut to the chase, which, in this case, is the quest for fire i.e. designing and building a plane capable of supersonic flight. In only his second film Denholm Elliott unveils the prototype for his series of weak, callow youths, in the role of Todd's kid brother who funks his first solo and winds up on the menu. Leslie Phillips, sans moustache gets twice as much screen-time as Elliott but is totally forgettable leaving the real acting to the big boys. Nigel Patrick had just come off Rattigan's The Browning Version - with Puffin Asquith at the helm - and played essentially the same role if schoolteachers were piloting jet planes or pilots were flying desks. Nigel Patrick was one of the old school stage actors, shoot cuffs first, ask anyone for tennis later and enhanced virtually every film in which he played. This is a film you want to like and mostly do if only ...

paulj-murphy Although many people will naturally think the claim that Britain broke the sound barrier before the Americans is its most obvious flaw, the really serious mistake in this film is the death of Denholm Elliott as a student pilot whilst making his first solo. The aircraft concerned was a De Havilland Tiger Moth. Not only is this easier to fly than any modern light aircraft, but no student pilot in history - to my knowledge - has ever died on a first solo, and certainly not in a Tiger Moth! No aircraft could possibly be more pleasant to fly, as any ex-Tiger pilot will tell you...If you want proof of this, shortly before he died, I spoke to John Justin, who played the pilot who broke the sound barrier in this film. He told me that he learned to fly in Argentina aged 12. He was taught on a Moth, and his instructor wanted to send him solo. However, the authorities found out he was only 12, and refused permission...I hope readers enjoy this anecdote! Paul Murphy (ex Tiger Moth pilot).