THE DUNKIRK RE-VISIT – Two Films, Sixty Years Apart, Tell One Astonishing Story

Naming ‘Dunkirk‘ (1958) as one of my favourite films is something I make no apology for.

Through my teenage years it became the definitive cinematic statement of events on and around the Dunkirk beaches in June 1940. Shot in drama-documentary style it incorporated newsreel footage into the dual story of John Mills leading a party of British Army stragglers to the French coast – and mobilisation of the flotilla of small boats that would rescue thousands of marooned Allied soldiers after being overrun by the Germans in Belgium and France.

It is a superb piece of film-making that does not waste a second in carrying the twin narratives, containing many tense and thought-provoking scenes. Therefore it was with great trepidation I read a new film version of the Dunkirk episode had gone into production, further alarmed when noting the member of a boy band had been cast in a leading role.

Dunkirk – fighting them on the beaches.

With these and several other reservations, I took my place in the cinema last week to watch ‘DUNKIRK‘ (2017) – and over the next two hours found my fears were largely misplaced.

For the most part it is an accomplished film, slightly less cohesive than its predecessor but no less dramatic in telling a three-pronged story – soldiers making their escape from the beaches, the RAF trying valiantly to keep the Luftwaffe at bay and a pleasure-boat sailing across the Channel to aid the evacuation.

It tries a shade too hard to incorporate as many aspects as possible, creating a lack of focus particularly in the first twenty minutes – with a couple of scenes involving Cillian Murphy as a British Officer rescued by Mark Rylance (captain of one of the small boats in question) being a touch over-wrought, to confuse rather than enhance the piece.

But these are minor gripes from someone who had almost made up his mind not to be impressed.

With regard to Harry Styles (of ‘One Direction‘ pop group fame), he carries off the role as a frightened young soldier pretty well and the film wins high marks for its battle scenes. The sinking of a British battleship with the loss of numerous poor souls sheltering below deck is particularly harrowing and reminiscent of a sequence in the 2001 movie ‘Pearl Harbor‘ – although ‘Dunkirk‘ is a far superior film in every aspect.

One surprising feature of the latest incarnation is there are no Germans – we know they are there in machine-gun nests, fighter planes and U-boats but there none on camera, unlike the 1957 version where John Mills and his cohorts encounter the enemy on several occasions.

In a final comparison between the two, Kenneth Branagh plays the Naval Officer overseeing operations on the Dunkirk quayside and had such a role been written into the earlier film it would have been a shoe-in for Jack Hawkins – an actor held in high esteem by Samtimonious.com as a previous post will testify.

What both films emphasise, each in a commendably under-stated way, is that rescuing the number of men who were spared death or capture was a miracle. This incredible feat of bravery and co-ordination brought back to Britain over quarter of a million Allied soldiers, after initial estimates put the total likely to be rescued at a tenth of that figure.

Indeed, the only story of Dunkirk that now needs telling is that of the brave men who held the town long enough in order that so many of their comrades-in-arms could escape.

Fighting to the last bullet and in some cases the last man, their tale is the one that needs telling in order for the Dunkirk story to be complete.

NEIL SAMBROOK is the author of MONTY’S DOUBLE – an acclaimed thriller now available as an Amazon Kindle book.