Customer Reviews

Finest Hour - The Battle of Britain [VHS]

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I first heard about this when I visited the Imperial War Museum in London earlier this year. There I was able to meet several of the people interviewed in the book and film. There was a huge display about the "Finest Hour" because this is the 60th anniversary of the Battle of Britain and because the survivors are now getting very old and are "going West..." It was time to truly put on a grand finale!

And then BBC put together this film tribute. PBS has shown it here in the United States and there is a book also. Putting it simply: this is OUTSTANDING! You will be gripped from the very start and simply won't want to leave your video. This is what you seldom see on television but when you do...it leaves a lasting impression.

The film uses survivors..."ordinary blokes" as one will call himself, to tell the story of young men and women, thrust into a war that they themselves thought might be the end of the world as they knew it. Young men in their late teens, just out of flying training, suddenly thrust into an air battle that would decide the fate of their country! Young children sent overseas to a faraway land because of the fear they would be killed in the bombing of the cities...

And you learn of the horror, the fears, the pain, as well as the joy, exultation, and jubilation. You get it all in this documentary. All Americans should see this because unless you are British, or have spent a lot of time there, you really don't know how huge the impact of this time was on the English people.

Get this film! You will NOT be dissappointed!

This documentary goes really deep into the feelings and thoughts of actual World War II survivors - Spitfire and Hurricane fighter plane pilots, Royal Navy members who survived Nazi U-boat attacks and floated in the middle of the Atlantic for days before being rescued, two girls whose ocean liner was sunk-again by a U-boat and who also were rescued; Churchill's secretary, women who worked in the RAF control/war room. The images of the battle are truly amazing, and are interspersed with scenes where dramatization of actual events was done, so you'll see B&W battle footage mixed with colour dramatizations but the latter does not in any way take away from the "realism" or detract from the facts.

The strongest part of these series are the interviews with British war veterans, both men and women, as well as with some Americans (like a prominent journalist who wrote about the War to the U.S. public with wonderful detail and humanity). You almost feel like you're there and have met these people. The account of Sir Winston Churchill's amazingly strong and relentless character is quite an eye-opener for it was precisely his strength of character which suited him as the perfect candidate as a "war-time leader" after the rather idealistic and passive (some might say Pacifist) Neville Chamberland (who would have probably made a good "peace-time leader").

The quality of the footage is again very good and the narration excellent - with much power and emotion. The interviewees sometimes have very heavy British or Scotch accents, making them hard to understand, but this is only a minor issue in an otherwise charged and concentrated account of one of the most important battles in history which saw the British stand up, all alone, against an unspeakably formidable Nazi monster, while the people were dancing and singing and playing baseball in the United States, thinking that this was a "European" war... Only after the British stood up and defeated or held back the Nazis, and only after the American press and Franklin Delano Roosevelt managed to convince congress to help, did the U.S.A finally bothered lifting a finger to help out...

A must see if you are a WWII enthusiast and want to see the emotional and human side of the Battle Of Britain, as opposed to the cold hard facts you would read in a history book.

Like Ken Burns' haunting "The Civil War", "Finest Hour: The Battle of Britain" (not to be confused with many other "Finest Hour" productions) is the last word in documentary magic. Arguably no other society since the Spartans has shown the raw, hanging-by-the-fingernails courage that the British summoned to hold out against the Nazi war machine. Narrated by the great Will Lyman, this documentary's strength lies in the personal accounts of profoundly British individuals who survived staggering hardship, and went on to enjoy their four o'clock tea; and in its standard-raising, professional quality.

Like all great documentaries, this production leaves the viewer with a profound sense of history as an aggregate of individual acts of courage, eccentricity, and occasionally just plain opportunism - all of which lead to Churchill's "broad, sunlit uplands" of the mind and spirit.

Having read the book first, I found the DVD disappointing, although meeting some of the original characters on the screen was rewarding.
Overall it lacked depth and detail.

"...Churchill was facing the collapse of his cabinet and the loss of most of his army" (then stranded in Dunkirk). "Over 200 British & French warships were soon involved in the rescue mission along with hundreds of smaller civilain craft." "The evacuation had gone better than anyone had dared to hope. Almost all the stranded British soldiers were rescued along with 80,000 French troops." Churchill---the 'man of the hour' in the drama of Britain's Finest Hour---had been Prime Minister for less than 3 weeks by this time. The documentary posits that Churchill's support was not great at this time; that Washington was "concerned about Winston Churchill's reputation as a heavy drinker," and that "Churchill's enemies in London shared the same anxiety. They believed that the PM's war policy was driven by bravado." Such is the substance of the first hour plus of this participant interview documentary, entitled "Finest Hour: The Battle of Britain," that, oddly enough, concerns not just the air war over Britain---which is more commonly referred to as the Battle of Britain---but the entire war effort. Consequently Churchill isn't quoted as saying that "The Battle of Britain is about to begin," and "upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilzation" until the end of Part One of this program; once 107 minutes have elapsed herein. But before much praise is given to Churchill's travels around the country and his speeches the producers, early in Part Two, make the point that "not everyone was inspired by Churchill's visits or by his oratory." We then get interviews of guys caught behind enemy lines seemingly just trying to save their own skins, the impressions of shipwrecked civilians, and critical remarks from former Navy seamen. These interviewees are often shown walking the environs where they worked many years back or walking along the geographic locale they are speaking about; be it beaches, abandoned airfields, strategic cliffs, or what have you. Then the producers ultimately conclude this examination of a massively successful endeavor by a determined people by explaining that "the British people rallied behind a maverick leader whose policy of total defense had at first appeared suicidal" But we get little by way of how this was accomplished; why Brits rallied under Churchill or details how individuals rose to the challenges facing them. That, after all, ought be the substance of a telling of the story of Britian's Finest Hour. PS: See my Amazon list on what to see/read to viscerally experience WW2. Click on my profile, then "SO YOU'D LIKE TO..." on the bottom of the page. (06Jun) Cheers!

I had read the book which prompted me to get the DVD. I enjoyed the book far more than the video . The book captured the dog fighting between the Luftwaffe and the RAF as if one was actually in the airplane. The DVD dealt with the Battle of Britain in the air in not so detailed a fashion and the writing did not come across nearly as well as the book. My wife (who had also read the book) and I were somewhat disappointed with the DVD.