Voxitype
Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.
Neive Bellamy
Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.
Frances Chung
Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable
andrew muhling
If you are looking for a war film where black as black bad guys are dealt violent and bloody justice buy faultless good guys? This is not the film for you. In this film you find ordinary people making there way from one day to the next as best they can.The characters are colourful and varied. Though their emotional travels they develop and share their lessons openly with the viewer. There is no simple lessons or clean cut right or wrong. the characters are heroes not because of their battlefield antics, but by their personal interaction and support for each other.The Way to the Stars is directed at pleasing walk, with some clever camera angles and thoughtful pauses. The battle scenes are all subliminal. So while you do get to see all sorts of planes flying, landing and taking off. There is next to no combat action. This is ok, as the film is really here to explore the affect combat has on the characters, not the actual combat it's self. In this, it's very close to perfect.I'd recommend it to anyone other than a gore hound.
DKosty123
This is not a big action film. While the viewer often hears the planes being revved up for another mission over Germany, this film deals more with the drama of the war. Particularly the drama of how the British fliers & the American Flyers got along on the ground.The films original title, "The Way To The Stars" kind of hints what this film does. It points out how the fliers from all the different countries had to co-exist in order to get the job done & win the war. It not only gives you an authentic feel, but the script goes along & illustrates the cultural differences between the American & British fliers.Below is a partial list of the cast & crew, & you will note a young Trevor Howard is on the list & a young Gene Simmons as well. While the film does not have the action, it is well directed & the characters are well drawn, a solid feature film from the more remote growing World War 2 period. It has now been close to 70 years since the war began & exactly that long since the Blitz on London. Next year will be 70 years since Pearl Harbor. This film is set after that event in the 1940's.Cast & Crew Anthony Asquith Director Michael Redgrave as David ArchdaleJohn Mills as Peter Penrose John Rosamund as Toddy Todd Douglass Montgomery as Johnny Hollis Stanley Holloway as Mr Palmer Renee Asherson as Iris WintertonFelix Aylmer as Reverend Charles Moss Basil Radford as Tiny Williams Bonar Colleano as Joe Friselli Trevor Howard as S/L Carter Joyce Carey as Miss Winterton
Martin Dawson
You have got to see this film, I saw it as a kid in Yorkshire, England where I live but did not appreciate it. until I saw it years later in my forties. But one line really stood out for me, been interested in the Apollo moon flights and spaceflight in general a character in the film says "...rockets, a thousands tons!" very prophetic, especially when you realise rockets weigh that much if not more. Been made in 1945 the largest rocket was the German A4/V2 which weighed about 25 tons. Guess who ever wrote the film had seen sight of The British Interplanetary Society's 'Journal' and Practical Mechanics from before the war.
writers_reign
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.
