Production
Authentic period aircraft were used instead of models or special effects to recreate the aerial sequences. In part, this was because 633 Squadron (No 633 Sqn) was the first film shot in colour in Panavision widescreen format, a choice that made the use of archival footage problematic.
In the novel on which the film was based, Roy Grant was British. Robertson, a US actor, was cast because he was popular internationally at the time and because an American central character improved the production's access to finance and worldwide audiences. Additionally, Robertson was an experienced pilot, owned a Supermarine Spitfire and was personally interested in making the film as an accurate portrayal of wartime flying. Although he was refused permission to fly for the purposes of the film, his scenes stand out as a realistic depiction of operational flying. When Robertson expressed reservations about the script, director Walter Mirisch engaged US scriptwriter Howard Koch, resident in London, to rewrite the film to placate him.
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Famous quotes containing the word production:
“An art whose limits depend on a moving image, mass audience, and industrial production is bound to differ from an art whose limits depend on language, a limited audience, and individual creation. In short, the filmed novel, in spite of certain resemblances, will inevitably become a different artistic entity from the novel on which it is based.”
—George Bluestone, U.S. educator, critic. “The Limits of the Novel and the Limits of the Film,” Novels Into Film, Johns Hopkins Press (1957)
“From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
—Charles Darwin (1809–1882)
“... this dream that men shall cease to waste strength in competition and shall come to pool their powers of production is coming to pass all over the earth.”
—Jane Addams (1860–1935)