No battle scenes, no fist fights, no arguments, no car chases, no tears -- just a modest and nicely written script by Terence Rattigan directed with skill and restraint by Anthony Asquith and smoothly performed by seasoned British actors and some American performers you've never heard of.John Mills is a newly minted RAF pilot posted to Halfpenny Field in 1940. It's the Battle of Britain but they don't just throw him into the obsolete Blenheim bombers at the field. They first assign him to a desk because his flying talents are less than minimal.Mills becomes friends with one of his superiors, Michael Redgrave, and attends Redgrave's wedding party. Redgrave disappears a year later on a mission, leaving behind his widow, Rosamund John, and their child. Everyone takes Redgrave's death with polite matter-of-factness but the fact is wrenching and leaves Mills firmly convinced that marriage has no place in war. This, naturally, aborts his courtship of the cute snub-nosed Renee Asherson.Next, a horde of American B-17 crews descend upon Halfpenny Field and their brusque manner contrasts with the decorous English politesse. A good chance for the script to go wrong here. Make the Yanks a mob of bragging, drunken, womanizing jackasses who shout when they speak. At first it seems this is the way the story may go. Lieutenant Joe Friselli, Bonar Colleano, appears to fit the template -- but, no. His expansiveness has shrunk to acceptable proportions by the end and he has been thoroughly humanized by the stress and the associated grief of combat.The American we get to know best is Douglass Montgomery, a bomber pilot who first thrusts his face into Mills' dual-occupant room and looks like the kind of guy who could be a vampire or robot. But he turns out to be quiet, married, and sensitive -- enough so that Redgrave's widow is attracted to him and he to her, though nothing comes of it.I don't suppose we really need those familiar shots of soaring Spitfires and turret gunners chattering away at the nettlesome enemy fighters. What we witness is the results of those battles on the ground.And it's a pretty good story, about those results, an ensemble effort that succeeds.

This film is possibly my favorite film. Having seen it late at night on the ABC (Australian) I waited a year reading the television guide regularly until it was on again and taped it. I have since bought it on DVD. This is a brilliant look at the airmen based in Britain during WWII. It doesn't glorify the war or show one bomb dropping over Germany, but it glorifies the Men and Women who lived the times and suffered the war in a time when the fate of the world was uncertain. Touching and truthful. The cast are amazing and the script has a sense of humor which has long been associated with Britain in war times. the relationship between the English and Americans is at times funny when it comes to cultural differences, but as today the two countries stood together.

This is one of those 'period' films replete with the kind of dialogue that we've heard 'sent up' a thousand times and responded to the send ups by laughing at them but this film that SHOULD be faintly risible holds the attention and inspires tears rather than laughter. This is probably because it is as finely crafted as a Faberge egg or a Louis VIII commode. The screenplay is the work of Terence Rattigan, one of the finest English playwrights of the 20th century - indeed even a cursory glance at the relationship between Joyce Cary and her niece Renee Asherson reveals a blueprint for the Mrs Railton-Bell and daughter Sybil in Rattigan's Separate Tables which lay a good ten years in the future - who could and did turn his hand to the screenplay usually successfully as in The Sound Barrier. Michael Redgrave, destined to star magnificently in Rattigan's The Browning Version (directed, as here, by Puffin Asquith)stands out as the dashing and charming pilot who disappears far too soon having flown without his 'lucky' lighter and gone down in flames. Rattigan's strength as a writer of wartime drama is in concentrating on the people rather than the battles so that the planes are seen taking off and landing at Halfpenny Field and that is all. The ensemble cast complement each other perfectly from John Mills raw recruit maturing into a leader to Stanley Holloway's hotel bore. One of the finest of its kind.

What an excellent film, with a cast that lifts it above other films made during WW2. Was there a British war film made that did not have John Mills starring in it? Many of the actors here went on to become familiar faces in film and British TV. The story-line and the absence of background music do make this film both nostalgic and entertaining.It may interest some that the 'Golden Lion' in the film does exist, it is a hotel in Northallerton, North Yorkshire. The street scenes were shot in nearby Bedale. I'm not sure which airfield was used, but it may have been one of the many bomber bases situated in this area, such as Leeming or Dishforth.