Alicia I love this movie so much

Micitype Pretty Good

FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

coolantic Yes, if ever there was a case of life trumping art, this was it. O.K. we all know NOW that Chucky Egg actually broke the sound barrier in 1947, but apparently this was not widely publicized at the time. Having said that, this film was only ever going to be a fiction. And nothing dates quicker than yesterday's view of tomorrow. Not one of David Lean's best, it features the dashing Nigel Patrick as a test pilot avidly pursuing the breaking of the titular maguffin. Having conveniently married Susan Ridgefield ( an oddly unattractive Anne Todd) he is enthusiastically supported in his quest by her father John Ridgefield, a rough-as-a-bear's-bum Yorkshire plane builder, played by Ralph Richardson, with a dodgy accent. Unfortunately, our Nigel gets killed and it is left to his pal Phil, played by the excellent, but underrated John Justin, to complete the job. Knowing the history you do wonder why they bothered even making this film. Apart from featuring some wonderful British jets of the fifties, the technical stuff is pretty basic, and the ultimate solution to the problem i.e. reversing the aircraft controls , is hardly believable. However, a nice humorous touch comes right at the end when Phil's wife (beautiful Dinah Sheridan) bothers him fussily about the children's new coats, just when he wants to tell her what he's achieved! In another scene, the film is prophetic. When questioning her father regarding the reason for wanting the break the sound barrier she mentions that an airliner will be able to fly to New York in 3 hours. He says "Two." She responds. "So a few, very rich people will be able to spend the weekend in New York!" Remind you of a particular Anglo-French plane? Anyway, cinema rarely sticks to the facts. I mean the Brits could try claiming that they obtained the German Enigma coding machine from a captured U-boat. But Hollywood says different!

larrysez Totally made up fantasy about how the sound barrier was initially broken by some English guy. It mashes up the true death of test pilot Geoffrey de Havilland in 1946 with a made-up subsequent crash and a made-up subsequent pioneering blast through the sound barrier, and it was written and filmed more than enough years after Chuck Yeager had really broken the sound barrier (after de Havilland's crash) to be a pretty outrageously and fictitiously an expression of British nationalism.All of the characters are very posh and very English (and of course lily white), with the exception of an irascible Scottish technical genius who may well have been the prototype for "Scotty" in the Star Trek franchise. Just the sort of movie you'd expect from postwar Britain when they thought they'd still be ruling the world for ever and ever, even as the empire was already disintegrating. Pretty good acting, but the characters are all a little too refined, too restrained, and too polite, even as the rather unscrupulous head of the aircraft company in the movie gets a pass on getting test pilots killed in the interest of being the first guy to build a supersonic plane.

sol- British aviation enthusiasts seek to break the sound barrier by dangerously pushing their jets beyond their limits in this solidly crafted drama starring Ralph Richardson. The film has copped a lot of flak over the years for its historical inaccuracies (the Americans were actually the first to break the sound barrier with very different techniques), however, 'The Sound Barrier' works well as a character drama as long as one takes all the pseudoscience on hand with a pinch of salt. The movie is rather slow to warm up, focusing on a formulaic courtship between Richardson's daughter and an up and coming pilot, however, as soon as Richardson enters the scene, it becomes an experience that rarely lets up. It is quite a sight to see Richardson's boyish enthusiasm for the task at hand, waxing poetic about a "whole new world ... in the grasp of man", demonstrating how aerial flight works during dinner and proclaiming that "it's just got to be done". His character also comes with shades of ambiguity; is he at all guilt-ridden over the deaths of those trying to complete the quest or does he see the deaths as acceptable in the name of human progress? Richardson does very well adding such shades to his character and while none of the supporting players come close to equaling him, he is enough alone to carry the film, or at least when on-screen. The film is also blessed by some great spinning shots within mysterious clouds and as one might expect from a film with such a title, the Oscar winning sound mixing here is highly effective.

ianlouisiana Imagine the sky,cloudless,deep blue as only at the height of an English summer,stretching from horizon to horizon.A small boy about 12 years old is happily searching rockpools left at low tide on a south coast beach.A shadow flashes across him,followed by a deep roaring sound.He looks up and spots a pencil-slim red jet plane disappearing into the distance followed shortly by the familiar "double boom" that signalled the breaking of the sound barrier.He lowers his fishing net and shields his eyes against the sun as the plane returns for another low-ceiling run over the sea.It could be the pre-title sequence for a movie about the perils of high-speed flight,but,in fact,the small boy was me,and I had just watched one of my heroes(the other one was Stanley Matthews) Squadron Leader Neville Duke regaining the world air speed record. Those were heady days to be a young Briton.The recent coronation of the lovely Queen Elizabeth the second,the climbing of Mount Everest,the end of the war in Korea - all these events combined to create a huge air of optimism.There was even a children's magazine called "The New Elizabethan" with no articles about how to avoid getting pregnant at 12 years of age(without being at all judgemental of course),how to spot dodgy "Ecstasy" tablets or how to get a start in modelling.To us modelling meant making planes from balsa wood.Moss and Campbell meant Stirling and Malcolm,reassuringly British names. No one calls the post 1952 era the Elizabethan age any more.Starting with Macmillan,the era became associated with the names of politicians,culminating with our present Dear Leader.It is becoming increasingly likely that history will remember only one Elizabethan Age,and it won't be this one. But it all could have been so different.The land fit for heroes didn't have to become the land fit for nothing,it just sort of happened without anybody noticing.Courage,self-sacrifice,idealism,patriotism and the pioneering spirit became merely the stuff of "sophisticated" comedy. "The Sound Barrier",demonstrably lauding all these attributes,could never get made in this brave new century. Somehow it has become "racist" to love your country,"elitist" to want to set high goals and achieve them.The men who flew jet lanes in the early post-war years were racist and elitist by modern definition. They had fought in a war(albeit against fascism)which made them post-imperialist dupes at the very least.And(worst sin of all) were mostly middle-class public school/boarding school products. Mr Nigel Patrick and Mr Denholm Elliot very accurately reflect this. A test pilot didn't climb into his cockpit,turn to his groundcrew chief and say"Gawd bless you governor,you've got a lucky fice",he really didn't.If you have a problem with that,then I suggest you watch "Top Gun" or "Officer and a Gentleman" and see how our more egalitarian American allies do things.Then think of what happened to them in Vietnam without a traditional Officer Class to lead their troops. Back in the days when "Flight" and "The Aeroplane" were staple reading for schoolboys,it was taken for granted that "breaking the sound barrier" was an essential first step towards space flight - that panacea-like dream of the 1950s.That proved to be correct and the first astronauts were beholden to men like Chuck Yeager whose courage was recognised in "The Right Stuff",albeit in a post-modern ironic sort of way.The British supersonic flight programme rather petered out in comparison,due possibly to lack of will and vision,but more probably,lack of money."The Sound Barrier" is its filmed legacy. The late Squadron Leader Duke was a man of high courage.A few months before his record breaking flight over the Sussex beaches a ,De Havilland 110,piloted by John Derry who had flown a Mosquito filming aerial views of Paris for "The Sound Barrier" broke up in supersonic flight at the Farnborough Air show,its wreckage causing many casualties in the crowd,which included David Lean and Ann Todd.In the deadly hush that followed,he walked out to his plane and took off.Flying low over the Hampshire hills,he banked round to the aerodrome and began his pass.The Hunter screamed over the runway and climbed rapidly,the resulting sonic boom offering a fitting tribute to his fallen colleagues and all the victims of man's restless urge to leave the confines of the Earth.