Coastal Command (film)
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Coastal Command, 73 minute long 1942 British film made by the Crown Film Unit for the Ministry of Information, dramatising the work of Coastal Command. It is now best known for its score by Ralph Vaughan Williams and was made under the supervision of Ian Dalrymple, with the full cooperation of the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy - the participants were all serving RAF officers, NCOs and aircrew, plus the occasional RN officer, (including Roger Hunter, pilot, and Flight Sergeant Charles Norman Lewis, both later killed in the war [1]) and their performances were generally well-received.
On release in America on 18th April 1944, distributed by RKO, it was said by the New York Times reviewer to suffer in comparison with the similar Memphis Belle.[2]. However, he did say that:
- Many of the individual glimpses in this film are intriguing to the eye, and the whole conveys an academic notion of the personal and organizational problems of the Coastal Command. But the obvious studio-staging of much of the action in which personnel is involved and the scattered arrangement of continuity drain the film of sharp immediacy and drive. Because it jumps its scenes from one plane to another, from shore to plane—and even a few times to the Nazi ship—without adequate definition, the spectator is forced to an objective point of view. A sense of artificial construction is plainly inevitable. Thus suspense and excitement are lacking. The mood becomes fitful and blasé.
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[edit] Plot
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The film is a documentary-style account of the work done by Shorts Sunderland and PBY Catalina flying boats in the north Atlantic and their attacks on enemy planes and submarines in the Second Battle of the Atlantic, including real-life footage of attacks on a major enemy ship by Hudsons and Halifaxes from the air force base in Iceland.It portrays a routine patrol, far out at sea, of a Sunderland flying boat over a convoy, during which a German submarine is bombed, and then gives a comprehensive description of a combined air attack on an enemy cruiser caught off base.
[edit] Cast and credits
- Director - J. B. Holmes.
- Cameraman - Jonah Jones.
[edit] Score
Vaughan Williams' score is colorful and atmospheric, and might be more popular if he had tailored it to a concert version, as Prokofiev had done with two of his film scores. Muir Mathieson did fashion a seven-movement suite from Coastal Command, but it has been largely ignored despite its overall high quality. It is typical of his later vigorous, Neo-romantic style. The music associated with the Hebrides (islands off the western coast of Scotland) is atmospheric in its dark and subdued sonorities and perhaps hints here of the Antarctic music associated with the score for Scott of the Antarctic (1948) and its offshoot the Sinfonia Antarctica. The music accompanying the encounter with, and sinking of, the German U-boat is both exciting and colorful, not the glorious-sounding stuff of shallow expression so often heard in other war films.
Vaughan Williams composed some of his most vigorous and energetic music for the scene where bombers depart Iceland to drop their deadly cargo on the German ship Düsseldorf in the North Sea. For the scene where the Sunderland is en route to view the damaged Düsseldorf, he supplies music that is serene and proud, using a glorious theme that would not be out of place in a grandiose choral work. The music used for the battle of the Beauforts is exciting and rhythmic, and most of the rest of the score is also of high quality. While Coastal Command cannot be compared with the better efforts of Prokofiev (Lieutenant Kije, Alexander Nevsky, and Ivan the Terrible), it is nevertheless an important score that ought to receive greater attention.
[edit] External links
[edit] References
- Neil Owen, Royal Air Force Station Oban 1939-45: A History of Flying Boat Operations
- Roger Manvell, "Films and the Second World War" (J.M. Dent & Sons, 1974)
