Wars and ConflictsΒ permalink
Riding the Storm
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Message 1.Β
Posted by Grumpyfred (U2228930) on Tuesday, 3rd November 2009
I watched this last night, and must agree it was done well. I few mistakes of course with bits from the film Battle of Britain being fitted in, and thus using the wrong mark of Spitfire. (The cannon firing marks arrived after the battle) Question was it a mistake, or was one of Churchills advisors Wavy Navy, or Royal Navy Voluntary Reserve. The man wore the rank of Captain in the R N V R, not regular navy. Oh and most of Churchills trips abroad were done by Avro York, not the Dakota. but apart from that, well done to the Beeb.
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Message 2
Posted by FormerlyOldHermit (U3291242) on Tuesday, 3rd November 2009
Also they made the mistake of saying Singapore's guns only fired towards the sea.
Very good though, but not as good as The Gathering Storm. -
Message 3
Posted by George1507 (U2607963) on Tuesday, 3rd November 2009
Does it matter so much if the planes weren't the right models?
Those are props put in to show the inspiration behind "the Few" speech, and to show he was working himelf too hard by flying to the US.
I thought it was pretty good, but Albert Finney was better as Churchill in the first one.
Still good though. -
Message 4
Posted by pedrokelly (U1360661) on Tuesday, 3rd November 2009
Saw this last night at thought it very good.
There is a question I have been meaning to ask on here for a wee while now, and last night watching this programme it came back to me. I don't want to start a new thread for just this question, so if you don't mind I'll drop it in here.
During the programme, during the D-Day scenes, they showed a clip of film, that I have seen many times. It is a black and white clip, taken as British, or perhaps Canadian, troop are disembarking from a landing craft onto a beach, I assume on D-Day.
As the troops leave there are houses or villas on, or just behind, the beach.
I am not a military tactician, but would you land on a beach where covering fire could be directed against you from buildings on the beach?
Does anyone know where this was filmed? was it part of a training excercise or actual footage from D-Day? -
Message 5
Posted by George1507 (U2607963) on Tuesday, 3rd November 2009
Landings on D Day were affected by tides and winds, and very few landing craft beached where they expected.
It may well be that those troops in the film should have landed somewhere else entirely.
The planners did try to avoid landing troops where they though fire could be heavy and concentrated, but it went awry on the day. -
Message 6
Posted by Allan D (U1791739) on Tuesday, 3rd November 2009
It also showed Churchill watching "Nelson & Lady Hamilton" (US title "That Hamilton Woman") starring Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh in 1940 at chequers and referring to it as "his favourite film". However it was not released until the end of April 1941. Churchill's favourite film was probably another Korda-Olivier-Leigh production, "Fire Over England" (the premiere of which he attended in 1936 and watched again several times subsequently), set at the time of the Spanish Armada with Flora Robson as Queen Elizabeth delivering the Tilbury speech.
The incident where Churchill recited Macauley's "Lays of Ancient Rome" (as well as Sir Walet Scott's "Marmion", another epic poem about the defeat of the Scots at Flodden Field) which, despite the disclaimer he gave in the programme, lay perfectly preserved in his memory from his days as a Harrow schoolboy over half a century earlier was not at the Cabinet table but iat dinner in the train back from Yorkshire, where Churchill had been inspecting troops, to Chequers on the evening of 31 March 1944. Colville, his private secretary, recorded the event as a "remarkable feat of memory, but rather boring."
The programme was called "Into the Storm", I think, btw, too. -
Message 7
Posted by giraffe47 (U4048491) on Tuesday, 3rd November 2009
Pedrokelly,
Some of the British landings on D-Day were right in front the seaside villages. Eg Gold Beach, at Arromanches, etc
They did not suffer nearly as badly as the US landing at Omaha beach (the Saving Private Ryan one) where there were cliffs, with largely untouched german defences. -
Message 8
Posted by dmatt47 (U13073434) on Tuesday, 3rd November 2009
I thought I heard the D-Day film bit (which has been used a number of times) was filmed later, but I may be wrong!.
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Message 9
Posted by Backtothedarkplace (U2955180) on Wednesday, 4th November 2009
if its the bit I think it was then the filming was at Arromanches? The houses are still there.
if it was that bit of film then it was filmed on or shortly after d day but its not the first wave going in the beach was already secured. -
Message 10
Posted by George1507 (U2607963) on Wednesday, 4th November 2009
Going back to "into the storm", how close do you feel it needs to be before it is historically accurate?
The wrong sort of Spitfire, the wrong sort of transport plane, the wrong movie shown at Churchill's film show?
Come on people, this was a good historical drama which may help to educate people about what happened, and why Winston is regarded as a national hero.
If you try to recreate everything exactly as it was, you run the risk that the sets and props take over the show, and the real meaning is lost.
Was he wearing the right colour socks? Did he have the correct cigars? Was the registration number of the car right?
Those things don't matter very much. It's about the situation and the man, and not about the props. -
Message 11
Posted by JB on a slippery slope to the thin end ofdabiscuit (U13805036) on Wednesday, 4th November 2009
It was a drama, not a historical document. The single Spitfire and Hurricane were symbolic.
Thought it was too short and rushed through events a little, as well as crediting the old man with a little too much hands-on credit for everything, e.g, the use of private pleasure craft at Dunkirk.
The problem for me was the fake news bulletins which used the wrong language and tone, and a general confusion throughout about forms of address. Lord Halifax would have been that or Edward Wood, not Edward Halifax, and the actor at the theatre would never have been so rude as to refer to "Winston Churchill" to his face when they had not been introduced rather than 'Mister Churchill'.
(AJP Taylor apologised at in the preface to his 1914-45 volume of the Cambridge History of England for referring to still-living figures by their names in print even in the 1960s.) -
Message 12
Posted by Grumpyfred (U2228930) on Wednesday, 4th November 2009
george, the problem is that these days to many people learn their history from watching T V or films. So if they see it on the box, it must be true. How many seen the film U577 and believe it so. Or having seen Waterloo think that the battle was won by us Brits alone. The makers of the Storm Docudrama relied on pulling clips from films, and indeed it showed that the Film Battle of Britain got some of it wrong, (But the way one was sliced nicely into the other was well done. There are plenty of shots from other earlier films that show the right planes etc. It was simply down to lazyness, or not knowing and not researching. As a (Published) writer, I knowv research is everything. I once read a book by a well known writer. Somehow both he and his proof reader had missed the fact that he had given a character a gun twenty years before it was made.
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Message 13
Posted by Spruggles (U13892773) on Wednesday, 4th November 2009
Hello,
I didn't see the programme but did these Spitfires have two or four fitted cannons? Because the first cannon armed Spitfires(two 20mm cannon and four .303 machine guns, the Mk IIB)were delivered to the RAF in early 1940 and did see some operational albeit limited service(due to the belt feed for the cannons jamming)therefore it was quite legitimate for the Mk IIB to be represented. The Mk IIB were withdrawn for a while for training until the gremlins were ironed out. See J.J. Johnson's 'Wing Leader' for a reference them in the B of B.
Regards Spruggles. -
Message 14
Posted by Allan D (U1791739) on Wednesday, 4th November 2009
You all have a point, it was primarily entertainment rather than a documentary and I agree that it was rather a gallop through the war years with some significant gaps - no mention of the attack on the Soviet Union (Stalin just turns up at the Teheran Conference without any explanation) whilst Churchill storms out of dinner (forgive the pun) after he learns of the attack on Pearl Harbour declaiming:
"We shall declare war on Japan at once"
whereas the declaration of war on Japan was for reasons quite independent of the Pearl Harbour assault. Also it was implied that Churchill & Roosevelt's first summit was held after Pearl Harbour whereas they had already met off Newfoundland in August 1941.
As regards historical accuracy I would not put it in the same category of egregious offender as, for example, "The Tudors" (although that is also immensely entertaining and watchable) and it is difficult to compress a period of tumultous history such as WWII into a 90-minute drama - I still think the best dramatisatioon of winston Churchill was the ITV series of the 1980s about Churchill in the 1930s - "The Wilderness Years" - with Robert Hardy as The Great Man.
I think Brendan Gleeson's portrayal of Churchill should be complimented as it didn't slide into the occasional caricature that Albert Finney's portrayal did in the prequel, "the Gathering storm" and I think Janet McTeer's performance as Clementine Churchill deserves high praise as she aptly illustrated the tensions that existed at the centre of what was a difficult marriage but which was nevertheless essential to Churchill's ability to function successfully not only during his wartime premiership but throughout his whole career. -
Message 15
Posted by Grumpyfred (U2228930) on Wednesday, 4th November 2009
Allan D, I would agree, the acting was superp, as was the story line. Churchill again never stood on an airfield and asked Dowding about reserves. He did it in the Fighter command bunker (At Uxbridge?) but it made good viewing.
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Message 16
Posted by Allan D (U1791739) on Wednesday, 4th November 2009
Yes, but he asked Keith Park, who was the OIC at Uxbridge, on the afternoon of 15 September 1940 (Dowding was at Stanmore).
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Message 17
Posted by Amphion (U3338999) on Wednesday, 4th November 2009
I thought they made the mistake of trying to squeeze to much history into a 60 minute programme. Wasn't the original The Gathering Storm a longer format. 90 or 180 minutes?
p.s. That bloke that played Stalin. Is he the official Stalin look alike at the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ, or is it that he speaks good russian? -
Message 18
Posted by Allan D (U1791739) on Wednesday, 4th November 2009
Didn't he also play Stalin in the recent Laurence Rees docu-drama series, "WWII - Behind Closed Doors"?
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Message 19
Posted by Vizzer aka U_numbers (U2011621) on Sunday, 8th November 2009
Did he have the correct cigars?Β
'Romeo y Julieta' - of course.
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