Wednesday, 28 August 2013

Truth vs propaganda

The First of the Few (1942)

Directed by Leslie Howard this film stars it's director as well as David Niven, Rosamund John, Roland Culver and Anne Firth. In the inter war period an aeroplane designer struggles to get his revolutionary new designs built.

This film has the uneasy balance of being a WW2 propaganda film as well as a biopic telling the story the design of the Spitfire. There are a number of historical inaccuracies both in the addition of David Niven's character and the way the story is told, largely for propaganda reasons but there is plenty of truth in the story too. Where the film does benefit from being made during WW2 is in that it includes a number of action sequences that are actual footage from real dog fights.


3/5

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