The Dam Busters
Well, our local soulless multiplex is doing a retro season at the moment and took it upon themselves to screen a newly restored version of The Dam Busters. As this happens to be one of my all-time favourite movies, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to go and see it on a big screen, and even managed to convince my Dad to come along with me.
I have to say, I was stunned at the quality of the restoration job. The only time any film damage can be seen is in some of the distance and archive shots – other than that it’s beautiful clean and crisp, with none of the lack of contrast normally visible in the tired old prints that tend to get dumped to DVD these days. The sound suffered a little but I think that’s more to do with the projectionist not knowing how best to downmix single channel audio, but it’s a small price to pay to see such a wonderful movie as it was meant to be seen.
I’m sure the inevitable remake will have lots of clever CGI zoomy swoopiness, but I bet they won’t be flying lancasters at sixty feet like they do in this version.
September 5, 2007 at 12:03 am
I hope that they restored the dogs name
September 5, 2007 at 7:15 am
Yup, they certainly did. It’s only changed in the politically correct American release.