Angels One Five |
Review by
Paul Fiander |
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Nostalgia plays a big part in a lot of the entertainment we consume, don’t believe just take a look at the site name of Backwards Compatible. We are always looking for things old and new to enjoy. Often the old is just a rerelease or us diving back into our collection of goodies but with the rend of remastering our older experiences are starting to appear in anew scrubbed up way. This is the case for a lot of games like the Last of Us and God of War. The same trend has been around in movies for a long time and the remastering art has been getting better as time has gone on.
You sometimes can be forgiven for not realising where the improvements in a film occur but thankfully the DVD of Angel One Five has a very nice extra in the form of a restoration comparison. It’s a 1 minute forty three second short that shows where some of the improvements were made, from tape join removal to dirt stabilization each change has given the image on screen a boost. There are some who like the artefacts as it is a link back to when the film was created but for me I prefer a cleaner sharper image where possible. |
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The film itself is a monument of the time it was made, coming out in the fifties, 1952 to be exact, the war was still a very fresh memory and audiences were still hungry for stories based around the more heroic ideas of conflict. There was not much considered more attractive in wartime then the life of a fighter pilot, the idea of flying a Spitfire or in the case of the Angels a Hurricane coming down and partying until the next day before taking to the air again is a wonderful image. Romanticism however is a subject that this film does not worry about from the outset, even though there are a few scenes of a cocktail party and other downtime activities. Instead it shows the more mundane day to day life of life at an Aerodrome, until things go south as they were known to do in 1940.
The stiff upper lip is present throughout the entire 1 hour and 34 minutes, it makes for entertaining viewing but there is a measure of stiff acting to go along with the upper lips. This is especially prominent when dealing with the death of pilots, it was a sign of the times but it feels quite alien. Visually even with the improvements it’s not hard to see the stuck in images of German bombers but these still feel more antiquated than cheap. The shots of Hurricanes and Spitfires taking off feel somehow mesmeric, the roar of the engines still leaves a chill every time I hear it and thankfully the sound is very pure. There are moments of comedy within the story but most are not played for laughs instead they feel natural reactions to a tense situation. This is may be a film of its time but it still a very good watch and opens a window to another time of film craft. |
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