Note: This article has been divided into three parts: Part1, Part 2, and Part 3 (Appendix and notes).
Copyright is retained by the author
This list has been compiled from Kinematograph Weekly end of year reports and is intend as a guide rather than a definitive account. (17)
The Wooden Horse and Odette were the 4th and 6th most popular films at the box office. They Were Not Divided (d. Terence Young. ‘An attempt to do for the Guards what The Way To The Stars did for the RAF’. Monthly Film Bulletin) was included in the list of 30 most popular films. The Miniver Story was mentioned for Greer Garson's performance. The only other British war film released this year was (according to the MFB) 'a uniquely incompetent' Resistance movie, directed by Edmond T. Greville, But Not in Vain. Two classic American war pictures were released in 1950 Sands of Iwo Jima (included in the top 30) and Twelve 0 Clock High (noted for Gregory Peck's performance).
Two war comedies -Worm’s Eye View and Appointment With Venus - got into the top 30 as did two big American films Rommel: Desert Fox and The Halls of Montezuma but no serious British war films were released that year except for the war thriller Circle of Danger (d. Jacques Tourneur).
ABPC's Battle of Britain film Angels One Five was very successful at the box office, Philip Leacock’s sombre bomber film Appointment in London, much less so, despite the presence of Dirk Bogarde. The long run of service comedies started with Brian Rix's popular farce Reluctant Heroes and Launder and Gilliatt's disappointingly flat Folly to be Wise. Several serious war films were being made for release in I953.
The Cruel Sea was the 3rd most popular film at the box office and three other British war films were included in the top 30: The Malta Story (d. Brian Desmond Hurst), Albert RN and The Red Beret (d. Terence Young) along with the American films Stalag I7 and The Desert Rats. Two service comedies, Ken Annakin’s Technicolor You Know What Sailors Are and Mancunian’s low-budget Its a Grand Life (with Frank Randle and Diana Dors) and Lewis Milestone’s They Who Dare (again Technicolor) are not mentioned as having done well.
Very few war films released this year: only The Purple Plain starring Gregory Peck, is included in the top 30, along with Columbia’s Pearl Harbour classic From Here To Eternity. But several war films were in production.
A big year for war films with The Dam Busters, the top box office grosser and Above Us The Waves (d. Ralph Thomas), The Colditz Story and The Sea Shall Not Have Them (d. Lewis Gilbert) included in the top 30. The only other British film was a re-make of a 30s barrack room comedy Orders Are Orders (d. David Palthengi), which, despite the presence of Peter Sellers, Sid James, Tony Hancock, Raymond Huntley and Bill Fraser doesn’t seem to have made much of a mark.
Another good year for war films with Reach For the Sky the top film, Private’s Progress 3rd and Cockleshell Heroes, A Town Like Alice (d. Jack Lee), The Baby and the Battleship, Sailor Beware (d. Gordon Parry) and The Man Who Never Was (d. Ronald Neame) among the top 20 films.
The Battle of The River Plate was the third most popular film and another film from Powell and Pressburger: Ill Met by Moonlight was in the top 30 along with The One That Got Away (d. Roy Baker) and Yangste Incident. Other war films, Columbia’s British offering High Flight (d. John Gilling), British Lion’s A Hill in Korea (d. Julian Amyes) and Hammer's The Steel Bayonet (d. Michael Carreras) don't seem to have done particularly well.
The peak year for war films with The Bridge on the River Kwai and Dunkirk first and third most popular films (with The Vikings sandwiched between them), and included among the top 30 at the box office: The Battle of the V1 (d. Vernon Sewell), Camp on Blood Island, Carry on Sergeant, Carve Her Name With Pride (d. Lewis Gilbert) Ice Cold in Alex (d. Lee Thompson), The Key (d. Carol Reed), as well as four Hollywood war films - The Naked and the Dead, No Time for Sergeants, A Time to Love and a Time to Die and The Young Lions . Cubby Broccoli’s No Time to Die (d. Terence Young) along with two films which were critically acclaimed - I Was Monty’s Double (d. John Guillermin) and Asquith's grimly sardonic Orders to Kill - did less well at the box office.
Danger Within, a Bryan Forbes scripted POW camp escape movie did moderately well and Hammer's hard-hitting Yesterday’s Enemy more so but the only war films to get in to the top 30 were the Fox-British Ingrid Bergman vehicle The Inn of the Sixth Happiness and the ABPC service comedy Operation Bullshine.
Sink The Bismark was second only to Doctor in Love at the box office (with Carry On Constable third). Two less prestigious war films Light Up the Sky (a rare home front film with Ian Carmichael, Tommy Steel, Benny Hill, Sydney Tafler and Dick Emery as a searchlight battery crew, directed by Lewis Gilbert), and Foxhole in Cairo (d. John Moxey) did well enough to get in to the top 30. Other war films, notably The Long, the Short and the Tall and Carl Foreman's long-awaited epic The Guns of Navarone (d. Lee Thompson) were being lined up for release in I961.
1. John Spraos, The Decline of the Cinema, Allen and Unwin, 1962 pp. 14, 34.
2. Ibid., p. 110.
3. Kinematograph Weekly 14 Dec. 1950.
4. Kinematograph Weekly 17 Dec. 1953.
5. Vincent Firth, ‘50 Years of War Films’, Film Review, Oct. 1977, p. 42.
6. Time and Tide, 28 May 1955. (BFI microfiche, The Dam Busters).
7. Quoted by Clyde Jeavons in A Pictorial History of the War Film, Hamlyn, 1974, p. 88.
8. Roy Armes, A Critical History of British Cinema, Secker and Warburg, 1978, p. 179.
9. Raymond Durgnat, A Mirror for England, Faber and Faber, 1970, p. 83.
note10Nicholas Pronay, ‘The British Post-Bellum Cinema’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, vol. 8, no. 1, 1988, p. 51.
11. See Andy Medhurst, ‘1950s War Films’, in Geoff Hurd (ed.) National Fictions, BFI, 1984, pp. 35-38 for a sympathetic and perceptive view of The Dam Busters.
12. Len Deighton, Fighter: The True Story of the Battle of Britain, Jonathan Cape, 1977, 1994, p. 109. Deighton points out, however ,that RAF flyers who survived their first few weeks in the air quickly narrowed the skill gap.
13. Neil Rattigan, ‘The Last Gasp of the Middle Class: British War Films of the 1950s’, in Winston Wheeler Dixon, Re-Viewing British Cinema, 1900-1992, State University of New York, 1994, p. 150
14. Christine Geraghty, ‘Masculinity’ in Geoff Hurd (ed.) National Fictions, BFI, 1984, p. 63.
15. Ibid. p. 65.
16. See Raymond Durgnat, A Mirror for England, pp. 86-89 for a sympathetic analysis of these films.
17. Kinematograph Weekly, 14 Dec. 1950, pp. 6-10; 20 Dec. 1951, pp. 9-10; 18 Dec. 1952, pp. 10, 46; 17 Dec. 1953, pp. 10-11; 16 Dec. 1954, pp. 8,9, 206; 15 Dec. 1955, pp. 4-5; 13 Dec. 1956, pp. 79-81; 12 Dec. 1957, pp. 6-9; 18 Dec. 1958, pp. 6-8; 17 Dec. 1959, pp. 6-8; 15 Dec. 1960, pp. 8-10.