Dambusters

I can't see the need for a remake of a classic British war film.

Too right. Modern actors never look quite right in these remakes. Whereas Richard Todd (and many other actors of the era) had genuine experience of frontline combat.
 
I'd imagine, and its purely that since I do not occupy the mind of a Hollywood producer, that people must be thinking they could re-tell it with all sorts of awesome CGI. As good as the original film is, the explosions are quite weird with that imposed raging river effect and the models are quite clearly models. On the other hand, remakes rarely succeed, Italian Job, Alfie, Wicker Man?

Should they keep the dogs name? Maybe, his name is fact and it shows how things were back then, just like today we would be appalled if our army in Afghanistan blew up some dam and flooded hundreRAB of innocents houses to achieve a military target. History is unpalatable.
 
I went to the Mohne dam in 81 there is a half of one of the bouncing bombs at either side of the dam and looking down the middle of the dam you can see were it was repaired, also in the turret at one end they have a picture galliery and video footage of the time.
 
Why all the sensitivity about the dog's name? The film was of its time, when the term wasn't pejorative like it is today.

My mother used to have among her reels of cotton thread, a shade known as N****r Brown. It was perfectly acceptable in those days, presumably when hardly anyone in this country had ever seen a black person.
 
The original film was taken from the Paul Brickhill novel when a lot of the information like the operational planning was still classified. ~This is no longer the case and hopefully the new film will reflect this.
 
Really? Wow, well I suppose it was a common term.

In about 2000, I was running a building job on the South Coast and in a meeting, the site manager ( an experienced builder with a rich Devon accent) said about a particular problem..."That tharrr, that's yer ****** in the woodpile"

There was a slight pause while everyone thought "Did he just say that? Can he say that? Should I say anything? Am I accepting it by not saying anything?"
 
I'm not sure whether the dog dying was actually true but I was told by someone who, until very recently, worked at the site where a lot of the 'scientific' element of the film was done that, during the making of the film, a dog belonging to one of the film crew actually was killed by being hit by a truck.

It might have been made part of the story because of that.
 
The book (by Paul Brickhill) is a bit like that. The operations are all over and done with, then you realise you're only half-way through the book, which goes on to the squadron's other missions.



If the documentary (which I haven't seen yet) was widescreen, then the B&W clips might have been scaled up (and cropped) to fit the frame. That will lose some quality, if the source was video tape, although it sounRAB worse than that.
 
The dog was run over and killed by a car outside the main gate of RAF Scampton on May 15.Barnes Wallis feared that this might be a dreadful omen for the raid. The dog was buried outside Gibson's office at midnight on May 16, after the Dambusters had taken off - The Dambusters,John Sweetman, Time Warner Books.
 
I have enjoyed the film several times in the past - surely part of the point was the build-up to the raid and Barnes Wallis' story. Of course the docco was an excuse for Martin Shaw to do a bit of flying as he's a vintage aircraft nut but nothing wrong with that.I didn't have a problem with the picture quality from the original film.I fear the remake may turn out to be one that wasn't worth doing - what next, a remake of Saving Private Ryan ?
 
You'd hope with Stephen Fry writing the script and Peter Jackson producing they'd make a good job of it. Remember reading somewhere that they hadn't made a decision on the dog's name but apparently Guy Gibson quite often called it Nigsy. so that was maybe a name they would go with.

Great film though, will be interesting to see what they do with the remake.
 
Watched it last night, fantastic. I found the dog's name a bit jarring, but understand that's how things used to be (and glad they aren't the same now.) The footage of the bombers flying feet over the water is incredible, and like someone said above, the film has a wonderful atmosphere to it. I'm going to watch Dambusters de-classified later:)
 
Unfortunately no I haven't viewed the dog's gravestone for myself. Driven past the camp many times, but not sure if the public can actually gain access as it's still a working camp (and was home to the Red Arrows until they moved to RAF Waddington) and they had people patrolling the gates last time I went past. There are pictures on the internet of the gravestone though, and I remember it being featured on the local news a few years back. There's a memorial in the nearby town of Woodhall Spa which names the 'dambusters' and also Petwood Hotel in the town has a lot of stuff dedicated to the dambusters as it was here many of the squadron stayed.
 
Thanks. Yes - I thought that might be the case with regard to the general public as the site is still in operation. I'm sure though there are still to this day afficionados who drop by to (try to) have a look at where it was filmed (I believe many scenes were also filmed at another nearby RAF base which, unlike Scampton, is no longer in use).
 
From a conversation I had with my wife's late uncle* a few years ago, the pilots who did the film had to rapidly retrain to familiarise themselves with the Lanc.

During the filming of the attacks, the director wasn't happy about their flying over the reservoirs at 60ft - it didn't look that impressive in daylight, so they flew at 40ft instead.

* I have no reason to doubt him, as he was one of the pilots! :)
 
I think this is one film that's crying out for a modern remake.

PIcture this - on the outward flight one of the Lancs (can't remember whose) flew so low over the Channel that it skimmed the surface of the sea and scooped up thousanRAB of gallons of water through the open bomb bay that promptly flowed down the back of the plane and nearly drowned the tail gunner.

Just one of many scenes that would look amazing with modern filming techniques...
 
Bouncing Balls - war is about muddling through - what we have here is a good enjoyable film, but it's a reconstructed myth.

I prefer Armstrong & Miller's deconstructions, rather than horribly boring Colditz, The Wooden Horse, etc ......

(If you want to know "how it was", then read the books!).
 
The incident to which you refer concerns Lanc AJ-H which was attacking the Sorpe Dam in the second wave.It had just crossed the Dutch coast flying low when the naivigator told Pilot Officer Geoff Rice that the altimeter was reading zero !
The aircraft hit water and in the process lost the bomb.Water flooded into the Lanc and swept out the Elsan toilet.With no bomb to drop Rice returned safely to Scampton. Martin Shaw did mention they had to get special permission from the Dutch authorities to fly so low over the coast when they were filming the docco. Indeed it would look terrific with CGI - not to mention the expletives which came from the rear gunner Sgt Burns
 
Interesting really - hundreRAB if not thousanRAB were killed in those raiRAB, however legitimate the targets were then. Yet the name of a dog at the time causes, potentially, greater offence!
 
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