In 1943, a British bomber squadron destroyed two major dams in the heart of Germany's industrial production center in the Ruhr Valley, knocking out hydroelectric power in the area and crippling steel foundries for months. The British press dubbed the 617 Squadron the Dam Busters, and the story was told in a bestselling nonfiction book and a 1955 movie.
Richard Todd stars as Wing Commander Guy Gibson, the flier who trained the squad in secret and led the mission but there's another hero in the story: Dr. Barnes Wallis, the aeronautical engineer and inventor who masterminded the plan and created "bouncing bombs" designed to do what conventional bombs could not. Nothing like it had ever been attempted and the film takes the time to not simply explain but demonstrate the physics behind the plan.
Michael Redgrave plays Wallis as a quiet but brilliant professorial chap obsessed with the challenge while Todd is the charismatic officer who earns the loyalty of his crews. The character drama, however, is secondary to the mission and the film is most interesting as it lays out in the details of planning, testing, and training, a long, extended process necessary for such an unprecedented mission. Director Michael Anderson creates a gripping and compelling story of it all with unshowy but strong imagery, using the scope and scale of the mission to illustrate the dangers of the task that the men undertake with quiet focus and patriotic zeal. The film is remarkably accurate to the historical record, considering that details of the mission were still classified in 1955.
The filmmakers used classified bomb test footage but were forced to obscure certain details, resulting in bombs that appear as dark smudges when they are dropped from the air and skip across the water. (You can see the uncensored bomb test footage in the disc supplements.) The miniature work is superb (earning the film its sole Oscar nomination) and the bombing runs of the third act were a major inspiration for the Death Star attack at the climax of the original Star Wars. It was the top-grossing British production of 1955 in England and has become a classic of British cinema as well as one of the most respected war films ever made. However, viewers should be warned that Gibson has a dog named "Nigger" and the name is uttered throughout the film. Though not intended as a slur, it is jarring and offensive.
The new DVD and Blu-ray editions from Film Movement are mastered from a recent restoration and feature the 40-minute The Making of The Dam Busters, archival documentaries on Sir Barnes Wallis and the 617 Squadron, and footage of the military bomb tests among other supplements. It makes for a very informative package. Highly recommended.