Battle of Britain – directors cut?

I thought the line was ‘Our chum can’t believe that Sedan has fallen, I can’…

I’m pretty sure it is “Our chum can’t believe Sedan has fallen. I can.” He speaks of Sedan, France, not Sudan in Africa.

Yes, I know…..isn’t that what I said?

Pink Floyds the Wall uses sound bites too! The ‘Simon’ scene where he gets shot down – hun in the sun!! Used just before Comfortably Numb

BoB directors Cut

There was surely a lot of footage that ended up on the cutting room floor. I have seen stills showing AA batteries and, for example, inside the East End reception centre that never made the final cut.

If you are lucky enough to have a complete BoB Postcard Album by J Arthur Dixon there is a splendid colour postcard BB28 by Keith Hamshere showing a 3.7 AA battery in night action with surrounding searchlights, it says this photograph was taken during filming of Battle of Britain.
There is also a set of 66 photo cards produced by A&BC Chewing gum at the time with many scenes not shown in film such as a German AA gun and crew defending airfield, a diiferent angle shot of Heinkel crew briefing and plane just in a hangar [Adlertag scene], rear view of at least a dozen “ME109s” wait for take off and Heinkels being un covered from screens of cam netting.
The late Robert Rudhall wrote two superb books on the film which i believe are now out of print, each of these give such a tremendous amount of background and detail that is essential for anyone who has an interest in this classic film of the 60s.

So theoretically you could ‘re-make’ the film using un-seen aerial outakes and a new cast/ground footage with a handful of flying aircaft and replicas to blend the new in to the old aerial stuff?

Dark Blue World was halfway there…

I thought the line was ‘Our chum can’t believe that Sedan has fallen, I can’…

I’m pretty sure it is “Our chum can’t believe Sedan has fallen. I can.” He speaks of Sedan, France, not Sudan in Africa.

Chappie

I seem to remember seeing a figure of ‘a hundred hours’ of air-to-air footage alone being shot! Can that be correct?

When the people who fly camera ships talk of twenty five hours flying to achieve something like 7 minutes screen time that sounds feasible.

So theoretically you could ‘re-make’ the film using un-seen aerial outakes and a new cast/ground footage with a handful of flying aircaft and replicas to blend the new in to the old aerial stuff?

A few years ago we had a forum get together at Duxford where Robert Rudhall gave us a very interesting talk on the film and I remember him saying there is approx 20 minutes of aerial shots in the film and approx 50 hours worth in store. There is also film of another squadron which was filmed on the east side of Duxford and was never included in the finished film.

Out-takes have been used in the following (to the best of my knowledge):

Dark Blue World
Piece of Cake
The Battle of Britain (Ewan McGregor’s documentary)
First Light
Midway
Hope and Glory (the “newsreel” footage in the cinema)
Fighting the Blue
Battle of Britain – The Few/Darkest Hour/The Blitz
The Tuskegee Airmen

I reckon, with all the available stuff out there, you could make another couple of Battle of Britain movies for quite a low budget!

Yes on the 2 disc special edition there are some ‘featurettes’ – and there are some deleted scenes shown but not all !

A lot of productions have used BOB out takes, off the top of my head, Dark Blue world, Charlies Angels… a documentary the other week used loads of footage… are deleted scenes etc on the DVDS?

I purchased mine when I lived in Germany.
The German version is CA 126 minutes long? ( There are of course a lot more Spitfires shot down) & it was a draw !!!

I’ve seen the personal footage that Connie Edwards shot on his Super 8 camera during the filming. It’s pretty interesting stuff to see while he’s telling the story of what was going on.

Thanks Daren,

That would explain it – Mosquito Squadron isn’t one that draws me into wasting a couple of hours on a Sunday afternoon

Mosquito Squadron.

Off on a slight tangent, does anyone recall which film featured a scene with a pilot and wife/girlfriend walking in countryside and stumbling across a crashed 109 in a hedgerow or copse, If my very hazy memory serves me right she askes if there is anyone in it and he climbs on the wreck to see…………..In my mind they are played by Christopher Plummer and Suzannah York which probably isn’t helping matters.

Jeff

There was a documentary on the Battle of Britain on the history channel (I think) and it used footage from the movie for their air to air sequences and some of those were different from what was in the movie.

Curlyboy

Quite possibly I would have thought. A 4/1 ratio is not unusual and on epics on the past much higher than that.

I seem to remember seeing a figure of ‘a hundred hours’ of air-to-air footage alone being shot! Can that be correct?

Probably! I still see things in documentaries and films that I’ve never seen before!

ohhh I do not watch those kind of films old chap 😎