Buques con alas

Supposedly set in the thirties, this glossy nonsense glorifying the Fleet Air Arm was made by Ealing before they soon afterwards hit their stride and realised that gung ho heroics were not exactly their thing.

The general unreality of the piece is indicated by the credit in the titles for the fashion houses that supplied the dresses; and although the final bombing raid is done with obvious models at least it provides the pleasure of seeing John Laurie in the cockpit of one of the planes.

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Trying to compare the production values of this film with a modern day blockbuster is stupid! It is like trying to compare a Ford Model T with a Ferrari - pointless. This film was made in 1941 two years into WW2. It was made on a low budget by actors trying to bring a little enjoyment and entertainment to an audience facing agonising uncertainty. I think it did that admirably! Remember also that if Hitler had won the war most of the cast would probably have been either shot or sent to a concentration camp for making this film. It was a film made for it's time. When you view it today try to view it in that context and you will not be disappointed. I grew up on these films and enjoy them as much today as I did in my childhood. If I want to watch a multi million dollar blockbuster then I watch a modern film.

This movie is rather simplistic with 'special' effects right out of Flash Gordon. The movie is very much a propaganda movie covering the introduction of the Fairy Fulmar, the Royal Navy's first eight-gun fighter, into service.

The actors did not leave me with any lasting impressions. The stars are the aircraft and ships, with excellent quality pictures of aircraft and ships that no longer exist.

The aircraft include: Swordfish, Fulmars, and Skuas

The ships include HMS Ark Royal and HMS Renown plus RN cruisers and destroyers. The pictures include deck scenes from the Ark Royal giving an insight to British carrier set up as opposed to the USN carrier ops that we are all so familiar with.

"Ships with Wings reminded me of three other war films. Three years earlier, John Clements in "The Four Feathers" had played another disgraced British officer who redeemed himself, and "Casablanca" also portrayed Italian officers as ineffective popinjays.

Most strikingly, though, just as "Air Force" depicts an instant United States naval victory days after Peal Harbor, SWW portrays a mass sinking of German ships by the Royal Navy at a time when Axis forces were sweeping across the Eastern Mediterranean. Such fictitious achievements may have been designed to raise morale, but I wonder how contemporary cinema-goers reacted to the preposterous antics shown in the last part of SWW, which today look risible. Another reviewer has described them as "comic-book".

To avoid "spoiling", I won't list all the half-dozen improbable actions, though I do wonder why there was no attempt by the carrier's crew to deal with the burning aircraft that had crashed on its deck.

The film did start well, with some good scenes of the launching of HMS Ark Royal and of aircraft of the early 1940s.

As always with films of this period, there are some interesting names to look out for among the cast.

This film was indeed propagandist in nature, so what? I mean so what? It has reasonably good performances from it's cast, Banks and Rennie really stand out......It's played with that exceptional British axiom, "the stiff upper lip" Stacey is the proverbial "sacrificial lamb" as a result of his indiscretion regarding an associate that wanted to fly....He comes back and gets his revenge on the axis SOB's and winds up going down in flames a-la John Carrol's "Woody Jason" in Dave Miller's 1942 opus: "Flying Tigers"..... This film NEVER fails to come through with the goods. As for the spfx.........Well, they could be better, but, as a long time spfx buff, you cannot, repeat, cannot fault the efforts and pure chutzpah of the technicians - even though it's all very improbable and very much "over the top". Look at Tsuburaya's early efforts at TOHO and Derek Medding's early work with Gerry Anderson. Screw CGI! Perhaps the lighting and photography of the miniature work could be improved, but the actual models themselves were superb and dead on accurate. Bloody good show!