A film directed
1) Background:
1.1) Michael Anderson later directed Logan's Run
1.2) Sherriff wrote the play Journey's End, and SF novel The
Hopkins' Manuscript, and
had already written the screenplay for The Invisible Man.
1.3) The screenplay for the film is based on The Dam Busters
by Paul Brickhill (but only the
early part of the book) and Enemy Coast Ahead by Guy Gibson
(Gibson's own account
- allegedly not ghost-written. RAF authors said not to have written it
include H E Bates
and Roald Dahl, though its style is closest to Neville Shute, who had
known Barnes
Wallis since they worked together on the R100 in the early 30s).
1.4) The film is two hours long and falls into three equal length
pieces:
1.4.1) Barnes
Wallis's efforts to build the bomb
1.4.2) the formation of 617 Squadron and
the trial bomb runs
1.5) Over half the film centres on Barnes Wallis, and the three
parts of the film are
emphasised by Wallis and a drink:
1.5.1) during the first third of the film he makes a pot of tea for
his visiting GP
1.5.2) in the second part he rejects a cup of coffee but has it
forced on him by Guy
Gibson whom he is visiting
1.5.3) in the final third he rejects a cup of cocoa
As the film moves from Wallis' actions to his consequences so he
moves from his drinks.
(This drinking is not in Brickhill or Gibson's books - it is Sherriff's
addition). This
minor detail, hardly noticed reinforces the sense of loss of
achievement. As the film
moves to its conclusion so Barnes Wallis moves from his real sustenance.
"Breaching the Dam"
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by Nicholas Trudgian
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2) The film excludes reference to the groundcrew and working class
Some of Brickhill's references to the men are not complimentary,
with the implication
that these were Guy Gibson's views as well.
Instead the film replaces all these real people with one figure,
unnamed (though Gibson
names him in his account, and on film addresses him as "Crosby"), who appears separately in the list of the
cast at the end of
the film, and is the only person with a noticeable British accent
(apart from a cameo
enraged farmer). This batman is actually given some speeches that were
actually said by
others eg he notifies Gibson that Nigger, Gibson's Labrador, was dead,
an
announcement actually made by Squadron Leader Whitworth.
His background is never explained - eg he was married and had told
his wife that he
was at training school (He died later in the war)
In life:
3.1) he had known Mutt Summers, Barnes Wallis's fellow engineer;
3.2) he had thought of political involvement in the Conservative
Party but found politics
too dirty;
3.3) he was sent off after the raid to the USA for PR work (for
which Enemy Coast
Ahead was written)
3.4) his secrecy rule was Draconian - and this lead to clamp downs
on enlisted men, but
it is represented in the film only by a schoolboy fight in the mess
following ragging
between squadrons. The class conflict he engendered is ignored.
His role is emphasised
Acts that could seem to lower his dignity are omitted (eg in his
search for bomb parts at
the trials he is shown only taking off his shoes and socks
demonstrating how he feels for
fragments with his toes, but he had to strip to his underwear actually).
Unlike Guy Gibson his home life is played up, as are his care and
thought for others. At
the end of the film he calls Gibson 'Gibby'. His modesty is also shown
(eg in the way he
gets for the trial an aircraft he designed - 'If you told them I
designed it - do you think
that would help?')
However, in the film he is shown as claiming that one rightly
placed bomb would breach
the dam, in reality he thought that it would take a series.
5) The RAF is raised to a better position:
eg at the early developments Barnes Wallis says 'Glanville and I
have calculated that it
would take only 30,000 pounds of this new explosive RDX'
(or something like that) but
the RAF had abandoned the use of RDX in 1937, relying on the much
weaker explosive
Amytol.
Also problems with the Ministry of War/ RAF bureaucracy were much
greater than is
suggested -even though Wallis is shown in many waiting rooms - at one
point he was
actually investigated by MI5, curious at the methods of his keenness.
6) The film is a great success, though the story is simple
There is almost no plot and some of the most dramatic incidents
(Wallis being
investigated by MI5, for instance, or a bomb falling out of an aircraft
at Scampton onto the ground)
are omitted.
Against the simplicity of events the film relies on limited
characterisation - but this is
strangely limited (for example, despite Barnes Wallis' early appearance
with his family he is repeatedly
shown as isolated - on the Chesil Bank, for instance, and the final
sequence of the film
shows Gibson walking alone; Nigger, of course, has died).
Complexity is added by the structure of motifs described below:
7) Nigger the Dog
Guy Gibson's dog, a black Labrador, was a close companion, taken by
Gibson on
training flights, though not into action.
Nigger takes on the role of conscience - he is shown being given
beer by RAF men, at
the raid briefing he is excluded and driven away (in a friendly
fashion), leading to his
being run down by the driver of an unidentified vehicle which does not
stop. Gibson
asks -
7.1) for the code word 'Nigger' to be used for the breaching of the
dam,
7.2) for Nigger to be buried at midnight, the time of the raid.
Nigger becomes a symbol of conscience and of the ultimate failure
of the raid. Other
men are killed, Gibson loses his dog. (If it would have saved the dog,
we feel, the raid
ought not to have been proceeded with).
The loss of Nigger is a foreboding of the ultimate failure of a
raid which was popularly
treated as a success.
8) The Use of Models
8.1) Only one model is obviously used - a train flooded when the
dams are breached -
most likely due to a poor special effect, this is actually made
acceptable by a conscious
act near the beginning -
8.2) at Wallis' first test showing that a small amount of explosive
against the dam would
breach it, he is suddenly shown from the bottom of the model dam (test
dam) like a
Brobdingnagian figure (ie like the later model a swop from the normal
realism of the
film).
(Historical note: the team of special effects men at the film
studio were bought together
for this film and stayed. The last film on which they worked was 2001:
A Space
Odyssey).
9) Historical Failure
It has since been shown that the raid had much less effect that was
hoped on German
war production; those killed on the ground were Russian prisoners of
war, and Britain
suffered a grave loss of
qualified aircrew.
Wallis was working on a lot else at the time
Failure is exemplified by:
9.1) The number of bomb runs is not emphasised (see 4)
9.2) the loss of Nigger
9.3) the final emphasis on empty rooms
9.4) pictures of the dam breaking are not dramatic
10) Self-Service?
Barnes Wallis has his children helping him when the film begins
marking places,
recording lengths, finding balls. It is Wallis who makes the tea for
the doctor. Despite
their middle class home the Wallises have no servants. Wallis has to
find the bomb
pieces in the sea at Chesil Beach, and in the tanks at Teddington the
visitors are told
that he is alone (though he has assistants). All this contrasts with
the servants in the
RAF scenes (the waitress who brings his coffee in the canteen, the WAAF
with the
cocoa, Gibson's own batman).
11) The Enemy
The Dam Busters is unusual in that the enemy are seen only at the
end of the film and
then only as the distant anti-aircraft batteries. Wallis himself who
has inspired the
whole event never sees the enemy. The film thus lacks the traditional
division of Us
Versus Them. It is, perhaps, because oppositions are necessary to drama
that Sherriff
chose some of his motifs - Wallis alone versus Gibson in the body of
the RAF; Wallis
with no social support versus Gibson in a strongly ordered and
supportive organisation;
civilians without servants versus the military with servants. If these
can be thought of as
parallel lines running from the beginning to the end of the film, then
Sheriff has to find
methods of re-inforcing and cross-bracing the structure of his plot.
Sherriff found such
motifs in the drinks and the life and death of Gibson's dog.
12) Contrary Movement
Ultimately, though, there are two long plot elements which run
through the film and
cross, providing the complete cross-brace. If the likelihood,
development and planning
of the raid can be considered as one line representing Barnes Wallis'
ideas getting off
the ground, then the film presents a line running in an opposite
direction, which could
be described perhaps as a fall from grace:
12.1) Wallis' non-fluid intake
12.2) the death of Nigger and loss of his company
12.3) the final empty rooms, and Barnes Wallis' doubts: '56 men'
Diagram of film's construction:
The end of the film is inherent in the performance of the raid, the
raid is end of the film:
other elements (eg the three drinks) being isometric with the three
parts of the film
(planning, practice, performance of the raid).
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