The Sound Barrier (1952)

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

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.

I remember seeing "Breaking the Sound Barrier" on TV when I was in grade school in the early 60s. I remember thinking "wow" these are really cool planes. Then all of a sudden it hit me, wait a minute - Chuck Yeager, an American, broke the sound barrier not this guy. It pretty much ruined the movie for me after that. Even today whenever I hear about the movie I think to myself, this is the "wrong stuff." I then dig out my well viewed copy of the real thing (more or less), "The Right Stuff." Even as a 12 year old I knew the silliness of reversing the elevator to go supersonic. I was an avid model builder and budding aviation historian. I had never read anything about something like that. Come on try to be at least a little historically and technologically accurate. I find it had to beat the flight scene in the Right Stuff when Chuck Yeager broke through the sound barrier and the other scene when he is taking the F-104 past 100,000 feet. Now those are truly cool.

I noticed that an older review said that this film was not yet available on DVD in the States. Well, at least here in 2011 it is--and Netflix has a copy if you want to see the film.Now comes my typical rant. As an ex-history teacher, I really pay attention to historical accuracy in films. This film, sadly, is a mess historically. The Brits are lovely people--but we Americans (specifically Chuck Yeager) broke the sound barrier. Many other facts are also wrong--see the IMDb trivia section for more on this. Plus, it's sadly ironic that near the end the film seems to sing the praises of the Comet--a plane that soon became known as a deathtrap and was yanked from service because it had the annoying tendency to break apart in mid-air! HOWEVER, since the film was made by David Lean and features lovely actors such as Ralph Richardson, Ann Todd and Denholm Elliot, then it STILL is worth seeing despite its many deficiencies. Certainly NOT a must-see--but a decent fictional film.

The opening of the film, when a World War II fighter pilot hit what used to be called "compressibility," was a suspenseful interlude for the audience, particularly since it wasn't explained at the time.The film was shot in monochrome, and was produced during a time that technology was accelerating, and this was one of the early films outside some of the science-fiction films of the era that was pro-technology. It is interesting that most of the major characters were obsessed with pushing the envelope.As has been mentioned elsewhere, the "solution" presented to maintaining control of a supersonic aircraft actually is inaccurate. When a reporter asked the person who first actually broke the sound barrier, Gen. Chuck Yaeger, about that "solution," he indicated that doing what was proposed would have ensured the death of the pilot.The film is well worth watching, if for no other reason than to get a taste of people taking baby steps in the new world of postwar technology.