Dunkirk - The Movie

I've just finished watching it for the first time (yes I know) and I have to say, all things considered it was pretty damn good

Rich et all....Lots of AoS markings in it

 

Does anyone have/know any facts etc. about the film?

 

Andy - can't believe you have only just watched it! It's one of my favourites.
Bit of trivia - the theme music was also used in 'The Heroes of Telemark'.

 

AoS Drew?

 

Arm of Service Numbers. Members on this forum made a major break through a year or so ago identifying BEF units in original WW2 photo's and film footage by matching the AoS numbers discovered in some files to the units. Once the unit was identified the war diaries can be used to ID the possible location and what was actually happening when the photo was taken.

See below for an example:

http://www.ww2talk.com/forum/1940/35657-2nd-regiment-royal-horse-artillery.html

You need to visit the 1940 section more my friend, BEF is Best

 

If that's the old John Mills film then yes, it is good. I still don't think any moviemaker has yet made the most of Dunkirk as a subject though. It demands epic treatment.

 

It demands epic treatment.

You mean make it into a chick flick?

 

Drew: When I watch it, my heart is stirred when I see the fleet of small boats setting off to pick the lads up from the beach . . . and I think of my three Big Brothers.

Joe

 

The theme music was also used in the 'Inn of the Sixth Happiness', where Snowdonia stood in for northern China. It was directed by stalwart British journeyman Leslie Norman, father of Barry.

 

I was discussing the film earlier with Owen, mainly because I didn't know John Mills' unit at first and then discovering it was the Wilts which turned to the artillery unit firing the 25pdrs. As Owen rightly pointed out, they were not actors. So does anyone know who the Artillery extras were?

 

I know that in the beach crowd scenes most of the 'actors' were actually National Service soldiers (Guv'nor of my local was one of them - don't know if he got paid for it) so I would guess the Artillery men were regulars or National Servicemen.

 

Here you go - from my capacious archives

DUNKIRK 1958
Dunkirk Directed by [FONT=&quot]Leslie Norman[/FONT] ,Produced by [FONT=&quot]Michael Balcon[/FONT] Writing credits: Major J.S. Bradford MBE MC - (book / Dunkirk) Lt. Colonel Ewan Butler (book / factual account Dunkirk)Elleston Trevor / also known as Trevor Dudley-Smith (book/ fictional account The Big Pick-up)
Script Credits: David Divine/W.P.Lipscomb
Studio [FONT=&quot]Ealing Studios[/FONT] Distributed by [FONT=&quot]MGM[/FONT] Release date(s) 10 September 1958 (1958-09-10)
Production Dates
Apr 1957 at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Boreham Wood, Elstree, England
Beach scenes – Camber Sands East Sussex (also used in the Longest Day)
Strand Quay – west side of Rye used for the outskirts of Dunkirk

Some trivia - the extras were apparently serving British soldiers returned from a tour in Cyprus. They received no pay but Sergeants got free cinema tickets when it was released. What you need to know then is which units had been to Cyprus in 1957/8 when the film was made?

I don’t know when I first watched “Dunkirk”. It was made in 1957 and released in the UK on 20 March 1958. I wasn’t born until 1959 and although I will almost certainly have seen the film on a Sunday afternoon on television, I have no idea when that might have been. I suspect that both the director, Leslie Norman and the writers of the screenplay, W.P Lipscomb and David Divine are conflating the scenes they have seen in newsreels and incorporating them into the narrative of the film. In some cases they were using their own memories of the conflict.
Lipscomb was the project’s professional screenwriter; he had won an Oscar for his work on Pygmalion in 1938, but also wrote the scripts to Les Miserables and A Tale of Two Cities in 1935. He died a few months after Dunkirk was released, which may account for David Divine’s contribution. Whereas Lipscomb spent the war in the United States, Divine was a Royal Navy officer and actually took part in the action at Dunkirk. He wrote Nine Days of Dunkirk in 1945 - without access to all of the facts now known, but his was the first book written about the events.

Leslie Norman served in Burma with the ‘sonic warfare unit’ during WW2. This was a psychological warfare company which recorded sounds to be amplified, distorted and used against the Japanese. This is of course the subject of Norman’s later film, The Long and the Short and the Tall. (1961) which was written by Willis Hall, himself a National Serviceman in Malaya.

The other contributors to the film’s story, namely Major JS Bradford and Lt.Colonel Ewan Butler had written a book on Dunkirk in 1955. Trevor Dudley Smith (writing as Elleston Trevor) lived in Spain during WW2 and while it is commonly assumed that his novel, The Big Pick-Up, was the sole source for the film; it is clear that it wasn’t.

 

The Wilts? In the novel the film was based on, Mills and his best mate are supposed to be RE's, not infantry. (The novel, The Big Pick Up, is by Elleston Trevor, he of Flight of the Phoenix fame. It's not bad.)

 

I haven't watched the film for ages but my memory is that it wasn't as careful with uniform and equipment as people like us would now demand. There was so much BD still in use in the late 1950s that no one bothered to check if BD and webbing was 1937 pattern and lots of the detail had a later war feel.

Drew, any chance of some stills of AoS serials or formation signs so that we can see if they're 1940 period ?

 

Battery Sgt Major was called Warwick Ashton his Battery Major was Peter Halliday.A lot of it was made in Rye.

Regards

Clifford

 

I believe the Casualty Clearing Station where they draw lots in the film relates to 12 C.C.S - the paybooks below belonged to a Nursing Orderly with 12 C.C.S who seems to have been one of those who drew a short straw - he stayed behind and was taken POW.

Alistair

 

It was made in Sussex, they fight the germans in an Oast house and Dunkirk was Camber sands, the kit is quite poor, no gascapes, no 1940 features on the Bren, late war type webbing with multiple piece construction to name but a few on the main actors alone, at the end where the 2 survivors are drilling in the UK, you can see that all the other soldiers are wearing 49 pattern BD.

BUT it's still a good film and the kit in Atonement was no better all those years later

 

A fantastic film - and an influence on my interest on all things military!

I watched it just a couple of days ago, and am always surprised by the swearing in it - tame by today's standards though.

I hadn't noticed that the battledress might be the postwar type, but I did note that the slit trenches Mills et al are manning when they get the order to pull back seem to be of a design that doesn't appear in the training manuals until 1941...

A lot of scenes were filmed in Rye; outside the cinema in the opening scenes, the Vickers gun being set up by the rearguard plus a few other vignettes are all shot around the historic town centre.

The Dunkirk beach scenes were filmed at Camber Sands to the east of Rye, on the other side of the River Rother. No precise then and now shots are possible as the dunes change from year to year as the sand gets blown around. One pillbox there is being buried deeper, while another a few hundred yards away is gradually being uncovered.

Camber Sands is otherwise still the same in general appearance as it was in the film.

One of the best places to walk your dog!

- Pete