User Reviews

This film recounts an historical incident in which about two dozen British Lancasters delivered specially designed bombs that destroyed two important dams supplying water and hydroelectric power to the industrial area of the Ruhr. It sticks fairly close to the facts and it doesn't meander about. No rivalries over women in the pub. No women at all, practically. There is one brawl between fliers but it's a good-natured free-for-all in which everyone wrestles and laughs and no one throws a punch. The whole film is constructed around that cheerful exuberance. Everyone is anxious to take on this dangerous job. Nobody weeps. And when the bomb's designer hears of the mission's success, he grins widely and flaps his arms against his side as others congratulate him. And that's it.

The film is really divided into two parts. In the first, we follow the man who designed the plan and the bomb to go with it, Barnes Wallace, played as an abstracted but determined boffin. (He also designed a couple of bombers.) In order to hit the dam and sink to the proper depth before exploding, the bomb must be dropped from 60 feet at a designated speed and a specified distance from the target -- and at night, too. The film tells us that much but leaves out the fact that the bomb had to have a reverse spin of 500 rpm at the time of release, so the project was still more challenging. It's almost inconceivable that such a mission could be pulled off.

In the second part of the film, Guy Gibson (Richard Todd) and his fliers train to the point of exhaustion before undertaking the mission, which is about as deadly as can be imagined. Fifty-six men failed to return. (Gibson was killed on a later mission.) The climactic action scenes are well done, if the events themselves are a little turgid. At times it's a little difficult to follow what's happening and who exactly is involved, though the general sense gets through. Two of the three target dams were destroyed, flooding the valleys downstream, but the dams were up and running again about five weeks later. More than 1200 people were killed on the ground, mainly allied POWs. Spectacular raids often make for good drama but the results, if the missions are successful, are often temporary. (Eg., Ploesti.) The enemy has a habit of fixing things that are damaged. It seems, depending on the particular targets, that you either have to pulverize them or attack them repeatedly, and even then the enemy adapts.

None of this, these nettles of realism, can possibly reflect on the courage of Gibson and his colleagues. The decorations they earned were more than deserved. And none of this should make a viewer hesitate before seeing the movie. It's done in a grand style, though, to be sure, the special effects are of the period.

The Avro Lancaster, by the way, may have been the finest heavy bomber of the war. It wasn't particularly fast, it was lightly armed, and it was as ugly as sin, but it carried an enormous bomb load, was versatile, and handled like a fighter. A test pilot managed to put one through a barrel roll.

The acting doesn't really need too much comment. Michael Redgrave is very good. Richard Todd marches around and makes up-beat comments like a military man, which he was. A good war movie, and recommended.

For a period piece it is a pretty good movie though there are many and varied prints out there, some made for the American market have gratuitous shots of B-24's exploding cut into it to make the movie "more exciting" and in more modern releases there has been some editing to remove some code names and the name of Guy Gibson's dog which back then was called "N****r" in reference to his black coat - rather than a derogatory mention of a particular colour of human.

So if you can obtain an original British print of this movie (you can get it from Amazon in the UK - though it is a UK region DVD with PAL output) then you will see the unedited version.

The film deals with the RAF's May 1943 - "Operation Chastise" - an early attempt at what is now known as "precision bombing" using special munitions - in this case a bomb code-named "Upkeep" but known to all UK citizen's as "the bouncing bomb" - because that is what the bomb did. In order to defeat torpedo netting in front of the dams and in order to place the bomb in close contact with the dam face in order to disrupt it and blow a hole in it - planes had to fly at a precise course, speed and height over water in order to drop their bomb and knock out the hydro-electric dams that provided power to the German industry in the Ruhr valley.

The film is historically important because it records an event that gave the UK a HUGE morale boost when the country was tiring of a series of defeats and at the time the raid took place Churchill was visiting Roosevelt who was having serious concerns about the effectiveness of the UK's forces in the fight against Germany. The raid took place while Churchill was meeting with Roosevelt and gave Churchill some political capital during the visit. A single squadron of bombers in one night had achieved more than the US Army's 8th Air force had achieved in a year of bombing. (and to be fair - the RAF had not been doing much better up to that point).

The movie is in two parts - inventor Barnes Wallis's fight with officialdom to get his idea recognised and the training and actual operation.

The first part is a condensation of a very complex political process and historically suffers from the compression of the facts. Wallis was not the lone voice in the wilderness portrayed in the movie but the analogy serves well with the British movie-going public who in 1954 could remember when the UK stood alone against Germany. This part of the movie is helped by actual wartime footage of the bomb design and testing - though the edited large black "blob" hanging under the real test aircraft was to disguise details of the workings of the bomb which - even in 1954 - were still secret.

The training for the operation and the actual raid sequence uses Lancaster bombers on loan from the RAF and gives a sobering impression of just how hard it was to safely fly a 12,000 lb; 4 engined heavy bomber just 60 feet over water in order to deploy the weapon correctly. The actual raid follows the events as known in 1954 when the film was made. Subsequent research has corrected some of the finer details but the sense of the story is correct. Special effects - by modern standards - are pretty weak but the mixing of real wartime footage plus a stroke of luck for the producers when the Dutch dykes (dams to keep out seawater - like New Orleans' levees) failed in 1953 and Holland was flooded - produced real footage of a flooded countryside.

Careful before and after sequences of crew's rooms, mess halls and the airfield portray the huge casualties suffered by the air crews pressing home this particular raid.

Naive political incorrectness aside (which is over debated in many on-line forums - it is a reasonably historically accurate film for goodness sake!) this movie gives a fair account of the operation and tells the tale from the point of view of the human cost. Worth a watch.

This film is a classic. I don't mean that in "Gone with the wind" terms or Orson Welles directed so and so. No, what I am saying is that you should appreciate this film for a value it contains that is really a pure watchability factor. A nine year old kid on the edge of his seat desperately wanting to inform both parents of the enjoyment he was having. His moment. His crucial awareness of everything in his mind that was WWII. Except his dad was working late shift and his mum had popped out for a while, probably nothing important. So he had to do it alone, gripped tightly while the main plot ideas filtered through, the physics behind the dam attacks and the character interaction emerged. Then sadness, heart wrenching sadness (SORRY SPOILER AHEAD>)the Group Captains' dog got run over. Can you imagine the emotions running through a nine year old at the time? Anyway these things are quickly forgotten when we are at war with Germany so the DamBusting build up was anticipated and enjoyed. And this is the whole point. Please don't knock this film on allegedly poor special effects. It was made in (just) post war Britain when money was hard to come by, and let's face it that was a less enlightened age. Modern criticism is easy in retrospect. No, just get yourself a copy, sit back and enjoy a true piece of genuine, unpretentious escapism. And if you don't already know- it's based pretty closely on a true story. The music's rather good too. Just ask somebody who was around then. I rated this film one of the best. I gave it 10/10

In much the same way as Group Captain Douglas Bader,Wing Commander Guy Gibson has been de-mythologised in recent years.Middle class war heroes are no longer required in Cool Brittania.Once the last second world war veteran has gone to his grave it will no longer be "helpful" or "relevant" to recount their deeds or recall their sacrifice. In our glorious Mockney-speaking leader's classless society we look only forwards.To see him at the Festival of Remembrance the other evening looking piously on as millions of poppies drifted down from the ceiling of the Albert Hall was an unedifying spectacle. Fortunately fifty years ago we were made of sterner stuff and a movie like "The Dambusters",lauding the imagination and determination of our scientists and the courage and skill of our aircrews could be made to great acclaim.There was no moral maze,this was total war.Innocent people died."Non - Combatants" they were called.There's never been a weapon of war that could differentiate. "The Dambusters" contains my favourite Michael Redgrave performance. He presents Barnes-Wallis as a rather large enthusiastic schoolboy,a less self - conscious Magnus Pyke.With his raincoat and bicycle clips he is very much the donnish figure,but he has a steely streak and pushes his ideas up through the ranks of the War Office right to the desk of "Butch" Harris,head of Bomber Command. Based in the bleak Lincolnshire fens,Wing Commander Gibson is tasked with assessing the feasibility of using Barnes-Waliis's revolutionary "bouncing bomb" as a water-borne weapon to breach the Mohne and Eder dams. Richard Todd,has,rather unfairly,been saddled with the stereotypical middle-ranking officer image which to a certain extent blighted his later career.Certainly he is very effective as Gibson,a man determined at all costs to successfully complete his mission and assuming in his men the same kind of stubborn courage he himself exhibited. It has since been alleged that he was arrogant,cold and as careless of the personal safety of his crews as he was of his own.Tragically those are amongst the qualities needed to wage and win total war.Being nice isn't notably prominent amongst them I'm afraid. 76 men died on the "Dambusters" raid and very little damage was done to the German War Effort.But as a propaganda exercise at a transitional stage in the war it a priceless victory. Nowadays wars are fought on - I nearly said "for" - the nightly TV news.Every casualty is announced by grim - faced presenters with weeping widows and orphans in the next shot.If that had been happening during the second world war we would have been suing for peace after Dunkirk. Bomber Command made a huge contribution the the defeat of Nazism at the cost of 55,000 aircrew.Men like Guy Gibson and Barnes-Wallis represented the curiously British talent for putting the most unlikely people together at just the right time to achieve the desired result. Each respected and recognised the other's eminence in his particular field.This apparent gift for the serendipitous combination was of great help in other theatres of operation as the war progressed. Lessons learned on this raid were built upon until the RAF had air supremacy.In the context of the Air War in general,this was just another raid.In the post-war folk legends it is up there with the Battle of Britain. We were given the afternoon off from school to go and see "The Dambusters" eleven years after the war had ended.That was how "big" the movie was.Sadly very few people now see it as it was meant to be seen,at the cinema.They miss the magnificent sound recording of the unmistakable Rolls Royce Merlins,the evocative shots of the Lancasters flying low cross the fields are wasted on the small screen and,most of all,the wonderful music flooding the cinema at the end.You can imagine the effect it had on me as a fifteen year old.As I came out into the afternoon sunlight onto Brighton seafront I checked my mirrors for ME 109s and raced for home with nothing on the clock but the makers' name.

I frankly do not understand the low rating of this movie. How could it be bettered? Certainly the explosions at the dams are phony, as indeed are many of the 'landscape' shots. But budgets were budgets in that decade of austerity, and effects were limited by the technology of the day. It was as good as it could have been.

This is a movie that takes you through the whole story. We begin with Barnes Wallis grappling over an idea in the garden, firing marbles and employing his children as fielders. Despite the fact that there's a war on, it's so civilised and sublimely innocent. A homely GP pays a house-call and stops for a cup of tea. A woman is content to be a wife and mother and make it her career. Children call their father 'daddy', and go to bed when told. Honest, decent middle-class England, when playing well was more important than winning; does anyone else remember it?

Next we see Wallis bouncing off the even bigger dam of official scepticism and bureaucracy. Again, there are wonderful performances and excellent script. When told he wants a Wellington bomber to play with he is asked something to the effect, 'What possible justification could I give to get a bomber allocated to you?' Wallis replies, 'Would it help if you told them I designed it?' Evidently it would.

In fact, the plane we mostly see is a mosquito, but let's not dwell on that.

Right up until the critical time, Wallis's design struggles against the prohibitive schedule. It's touch and go, and it's nerve-racking.

On the other side of the equation we see the development of the special squadron. A hand-picked team is led by Guy Gibson - perfectly played by Richard Todd. They begin low-level flight training. It's worth the price of the movie alone to see those huge, bulldog-muzzled Lancasters cart-wheeling around hills at hedge-clipping altitudes with their four Merlins roaring fit to pop your eardrums. You definitely need a sub-woofer with this one.

Gradually the two elements are married together and the fateful night arrives. The huge war-planes stand like sentinels on the airfield. Incidental music is pensive. It's the calm before the storm.

We only ever see 3 bombers at any one time and that's probably because even just 10 years after the war they were woefully obsolescent and mostly scrapped.

The low-level flights from the pilot and bomb-aimer perspective seem to be entirely authentic. AA guns open up from time to time. 150 or so men coolly set forth to do their duty, knowing that not all will return. We glimpse the tension at bomber command. Hits are scored but the dams remain intact. It looks as if Wallis may have got his sums wrong. Maybe he's a fruitcake after all.

Finally we see him encounter Guy Gibson on return. He is grief-stricken at the number of air-crews who have been lost despite 2 of the 3 dams being destroyed. Gibson walks resolutely back to his billet. He has a lot of letters to write.

There's nothing missing from either the story or the drama. It's a 2-hour movie that doesn't waste a second. It's also a history lesson; because it accurately portrays all of the social nuances of the day by people who - one way and another - lived through them. This movie simply could not be made in the third millennium. Oh-yes, the bombers and the bangs and the rushing waters could easily be computer-generated, and mighty fine they'd look too. But all of the subtle mannerisms of that age could never be authentically replicated by modern actors no matter how hard they tried. To this extent at least, Redgrave and Todd didn't have to act at all. They were from that age.

Every kid should be shown this movie today. It ought to be required viewing at school. It shows what real men and women are and what they did. The theme music should be our national anthem. It's a genuine historical classic, like 'Zulu', or 'A Night To Remember'. And like them; it's a must-see.

***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** Ten years after the Second World War ended, the British film business had covered most theatres and many episodes of derring-do. But the bomber offensive against Germany presented a problem. On the one hand, it was a huge and daring venture, more costly of life than almost any other. But even before the war ended "area" or "carpet" bombing had been denounced, within Britain as well as by Dr Goebbels, as a callous terrorisation of civilians. Thousands had burned or suffocated in Hamburg and Dresden. How to make celluloid heroics out of that?

The solution was to depict a strategic shift from blanket to pinpoint bombing: the raid on the three key Ruhr dams. Historians have disagreed about its effects on Nazi Germany's war effort; after all, Albert Speer's astonishing improvisations kept industry churning out weapons until 1945. However, the heavy new Lancasters which breached the dams using Dr Barnes Wallis's revolutionary bouncing bombs struck an almighty blow against Germany's prestige and morale: comparable only with the A-bombs on Japan, impressing the rest of the world and encouraging the British while we waited for America to augment our land and sea forces for the liberation of Europe.

The film's screenplay by RC "Journey's End" Sheriff is a model of direct, purposeful exposition. We go from A to Z with no sidetracks, no "balancing" subplots or obtruded light relief. When posters complain that today's big budget films are let down by inept storytelling, this is the skill they are missing. Special effects are sometimes hokey, more suited to a cartoon than live-action, but it matters little: the film is not for little boys playing video games. It is among the most mature and memorable pictures of reluctant warrior-dom.

"The Dam Busters" conveys the dogged skill of Bomber Command pilots who flew hundreds of miles at zero height, below radar cover, to deliver their payloads with fantastic exactitude. Eight "Lancs" and 56 men did not return. But most of the film is about the delays, false trails and frustrations Wallis endured trying to make the bombs bounce and the bureaucrats and brasshats okay the project. Had the film's tyro director, Michael Anderson, seen Powell and Pressburger's "The Small Back Room", released five years before? Wallis's disconsolate trail through the committee rooms of total war, his dogged faith in his concept, and the young Guy Gibson's patient nursing of 617 Squadron into a finely honed instrument for delivering the triple punch unfold in concise scenes, carefully paced and reeking of the atmosphere of quiet suspense between 1940 and 1944.

The film is yet another beneficiary of the low-key, documentarist spirit which continued to infuse British fiction films long after John Grierson had migrated to Canada. Some American viewers may well feel exasperated by its downbeat quality. Nothing about the girls the pilots left behind. No evil Spielbergian Nazis- the enemy is barely mentioned and hardly seen except for a few figures fleeing the floods. It is as if the Royal Air Force is fighting Nature. No big speeches about saving Democracy, no invocations of service tradition: the RAF was barely 20 years old, though it was the world's first independent air force. Not even much jolly banter in the mess, and no dogfights in the skies either. Just a bunch of "types" thrown together by the need to get a tough mission over and done with. There is even a moment where Bomber Command's chief, Sir Arthur Harris (Basil Sydney), who was still very much alive and kicking, is implicitly criticised. Wallis recalls how the Luftwaffe wrongly thought London could be blitzed into ruins, hinting that the British are now making the same blunder about Germany.

Typical of Anderson's throwaway approach is the scuffle in the mess between 617's members and other pilots who jovially accuse them of shirking. As soon as the fight breaks out, he cuts away to Gibson saying that he must get his boys settled down. After the raid, the camera roams round the deserted sleeping quarters of the men who didn't come back. It is more cinematic to show symbols of fear and loss than to chatter about these emotions; here the British stiff upper lip, the equivalent of the grace under pressure which the anglophile Hemingway looked for in Americans, works in the service of visual communication.

Redgrave likewise shows his character more than he talks. His body language evokes the boffin who is better at thought than speech. He fiddles with his spectacles, shambles around with an unmartial gait, bunched up with his arms pressed to his sides as if pinioned by frustration. When the bomb finally bounces, he says nothing but flings his arms aloft for once. He utters mildly, donnishly, and at moments of maximum feeling he cannot speak at all. His performance is all of a piece: the best movie work by one who in other roles often looked unsuitably stiff on screen.

The airplanes are posted "missing" on a blackboard; a BBC radio announcer with only a hint of triumph tells of the raid's success and cost. Wallis and Gibson exchange awkward congratulations, tinged with remorse, in the justly famous final scene. "The flak was bad, worse than I expected" says Gibson, beginning to apologise for his triumph as soon as he lands. Perhaps only a Brit, soaked in the mythology of honourable defeats such as Dunkirk and Coruna, can understand such understatement. We are superstitiously afraid to gloat over victories, as Orwell noted.

Eric Coates's splendid march is played in full only at this finale, as if to reward the audience for understanding why the chief protagonists' hearts are too full for rhetoric. And even then the string-based orchestration sounds sober and slightly plaintive, not jaunty like Sousa or Miller, or bombastic like a German brass band.

In the spirit of economy which guides "The Dam Busters", no real life sequelae are given over the credits. "Gibby" was killed on a sortie after receiving the Victoria Cross (Britain's equivalent of the CMH) and publishing a guarded memoir, "Enemy Coast Ahead". Wallis was knighted and hailed, but Harris was insulted at the war's end by being denied a peerage- unlike Fighter Command's Dowding, winner of the Battle of Britain. Harris was also refused permission to issue a final despatch on his campaign. For the rest of his days he resented the slight on "my bomber boys", of whom 50,000 died. Like Wallis he lived into his tenth decade, old enough to see Speer confirm in his autobiography that area bombing had indeed devastated the Nazi war effort. War can be cruel even after it is over. But a statue of Harris now stands opposite Dowding's outside the RAF Church.

Two footnotes: (1) Flt Lt Edward Johnson- at 31 one of the oldest men on the raid- died aged 90 on October 1. He invented the simple Johnson Sight for aiming as shown in the film.

(2) The Germans were impressed enough to invent a smaller rocket-propelled bouncing bomb, codenamed "Kurt", which was never used in anger.

The problem was simple. The solution was difficult. The cost was high. The result was not everything that was expected or even hoped for.

The Dam Busters tells us, with patriotic steadfastness and gallant actions, the development of a bouncing bomb, the story of Squadron 617 and then the action code-named Operation Chastize, carried out on May 17, 1943. Nineteen British aircraft set out on a high-risk mission to destroy key dams providing water and electricity for Germany's Ruhr industrial complex. A new bouncing bomb would be used to skip across the water, smash into the targeted dams and explode. Delivering the bombs required flying skills of the highest order. The planes had to sweep in very low and very fast through mountains and valleys, using unproven altimeters and primitive bomb sights. The crews had to release the bombs, now set to spinning in open bays, at the precise moment when calculations gave the bombs the best chance to skip and not sink and to strike exactly where they should.

The first part of The Dam Busters is the story of Professor Barnes Wallis (Michael Redgrave), whose idea for a bouncing bomb is nearly smothered by disbelieving civilian and military bureaucrats. Barnes is brilliant, innovative and extraordinarily persistent. Somehow, he succeeds in developing his spinning, bouncing bomb and convinces the war leaders that it can destroy dams where conventional bombing wouldn't.

The second part concentrates more on Wing Commander Guy Gibson (Richard Todd), who has been appointed leader of Squadron 617. He is charged with developing the flying tactics that will get his squadron over the target and successfully deliver the bombs. He has to come up with new flying techniques that will maximize the chances for success. These also maximize the chances for crashing into mountains and receiving a lot of German flak. He also will lead the attack. Through it all a typically inspiring music score will thump away.

Wallis' eccentric genius as he develops his bomb, fixes the glitches and deals with Whitehall is at times amusing but usually inspiring. Redgrave does a fine job with his character. Gibson's assurance and courage in the face of great personal risk (which at times almost seems that gambling with death has become some sort of exciting drug for him) is both inspiring and unnerving. Todd gives the standard ever-optimistic but serious-in-the-face- of-death portrayal that so many war movies dish up. Todd, like John Mills, was good at this sort of thing. He makes his character believable. The run into the Ruhr valley so low the crews could almost shake hands with the civilians, with flak crashing about, the planes shaking, the crews trying to make everything work as it should, the now spinning bombs let loose and bouncing off the waters toward the dams, and then the steep, steep climb of the remaining planes is gripping.

How successful was the mission? The movie doesn't deal with this, only with Wallis' ingenuity and the inspired heroism of the men who flew, who died and those who survived. But let's take a look at what wartime gallantry can bring. Of the several targeted dams, two were breeched and extensive flooding and destruction ensued. Of the 19 aircraft that set out, 11 returned. Of the 133 aircrew members 53 were killed and three became prisoners of war. Within a month after the raid, the Germans had restored water output back to normal and the Ruhr electricity grid was again producing power at full capacity. Of the more than 2,000 men and women who were killed in the flooding, more than half were Allied prisoners of war and forced laborers.

Professor Barnes, who also was the father of the earthquake bomb, was knighted and died full of honors at 92 in 1979. Wing Commander Guy Gibson was awarded the Victoria Cross and was killed a year later on another mission. He was 26 years old.

With operations like this, war leaders usually tell us later how much home front morale was improved, how much we learned from the operation, how many resources the enemy had to reallocate to guard against further such attacks, and how the gallantry and courage of our fighting men and women are without parallel. Often these leaders are themselves awarded medals and ribbons and honors. Perhaps we need fewer of these leaders who seem so easily caught up in the kind of gallantry that always results in the deaths of many brave young men and women. For those interested in "gallant" ideas that lead to the essentially pointless deaths of courageous young soldiers, you might want to watch A Bridge Too Far, Dieppe and Cockleshell Heroes.

The British excelled in the late 40s and 50s in putting together movies which told inspirational stories of the war, and The Dam Busters is one of those.

It is very much a product of its era, reflecting monochrome austerity by way of relatively low production values. The raids themselves come in for some criticism, although the special effects they use are absolutely standard for the time, and water in model work never looked realistic in any movie.

But the story is always interesting, the two key performances (Michael Redgrave as Barnes Wallis in the bomb development phase and Richard Todd as Guy Gibson during the raids) are solid and, of course, there is Eric Coates, unforgettable march/theme.

It is undoubtedly dated, but it is still one of the best British post WW2 war movies.