Appointment in London (1953)

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

We don't get to see that many movies about Bomber Command, though there are a goodly number of Eighth Air Force movies around. I guess American studios poured out more war movies but in the 1950s the Brits produced some hum dingers as well, and this is one of them.It bears some slight resemblance to "Twelve O'Clock High" in its structure. The men are convinced their squadron is jinxed and Bogarde must snap them out of it. Lots of tense ground scenes with the full story of a bombing raid over Germany saved until the end. And, like Gregory Peck, Dirk Bogarde is a pilot who has "done his share of flying" and is now a ground officer, enforcing discipline on the men. In an emergency, he climbs aboard a Lancaster for his final mission -- number ninety. When the Master Bomber, who acts as a kind of coach during the raid, is shot down, Bogarde takes over and saves the day. The appointment in London involves decorations for some of the men, to be awarded at Buckingham Palace. The role of Squadron Commander, though, really belongs to someone like Jack Hawkins, who can convey both empathy and necessity. Bogarde is stern enough but brings a slightly personal, bitchy quality to the role. As usual, the officers and men are a mixed group of Brits, Australians, and whatever people from Sheffield are called. There is an American major who slouches around, hands in pockets, wearing a big smile, acting as liaison officer to the RAF. He risks court martial by sneaking aboard on some raids and acting as tail gunner. You're likely to recognize him as the guarded Dr. Floyd in Kubrick's "2001." There are a couple of women too: a widow who is the object of rival affections, and a widow who generates sympathy. There is also the usual grabass in the mess hall, a kind of riot in which officers mark the ceiling with the inky prints of their bare feet. It's all rather good natured fun.The final raid is shown from its planning stages until the landing of the last overdue Lancaster. It's pretty tense. Bogarde is aboard one of the planes and the dramatic structure could go either way.I suspect that there may be more movies about the Americans' daylight precision bombing than about the British night-time area bombing partly because more combat footage is available from daylight missions. Of course, until fighters with sufficient range became available, daylight bombing meant unsustainable losses and the program was suspended for a while. The British program didn't do much better. Their losses were appalling. And the metric doesn't exist that would allow us to measure the airmen's suffering against that of the Germans beneath them. All the combatants took a terrific pummeling. War is an awful thing. One wonders why some of us seem so anxious to rush into the next one.

This is one of my favourite WW2 films and yet I only discovered it in the last few years.The script is well written, the acting particularly by Dirk Bogarde and Dinah Sheriden is excellent and believable. The footage of night bombing raids and the master bomber techniques it shows is by far the best of any film covering this subject.The film accurately portrays the life of a bomber squadron on "maximum effort". The pilot who survived because he went on leave before a high casualty raid. The fatigue and stress of being up night after night either flying or in the "Ops" room. The Wing Commander's sheer bloodymindedness and a sense of having to finish the tour is set against the knowledge of those around him that statistically his number should have come up several times already.This is truly excellent film. It doesn't surprise me that it has escaped the list of great war films because of its slightly stodgy title but it's up there with some of the best.

This is an unusual film. As others have commented it is well made, tautly scripted and has very good central performances. But that isn't what singles it out.It's commonly thought that night time area bombing by the RAF was a hit or miss affair, quite different from daylight precision bombing done by the USAAF. Whilst no one can argue that targets were easier to see during daylight hours, both the RAF and the Luftwaffe developed highly accurate methods of hitting their targets at night. In the fateful Dresden raid in February 1945, almost 95% of the RAF bombload fell within one mile of the markers placed with 50 metre accuracy by the Mosquito target illuminator aircraft. The following day, a quarter of the American daylight force sent to follow up bombed Prague, having mistaken one bend in the River Elbe for another. This film depicts, at length, the method of target marking the flight path using coloured airburst flares, eliminating 'creepback' by approaching the target along different vectors, air and ground marking the target and using a 'Master Bomber' to control the incoming streams and give bomb aimers feedback on accuracy.No medal was struck for Bomber Command and many of the crew themselves felt their contribution was best forgotten, so this film is one of the few accurate testaments to their courage.

This is probably the most realistic drama filmed about Bomber Command late in WWII. The technical details are superb.. the right aircraft in the right locations with the correct props and background.The acting really is first class and if it seems a little stilted then that's how it was then... if you don't believe me watch "Target for Tonight" which covered a Wellington Bomber mission early in the war and used real RAF crews .There are no over the top heroics, but the mood is just right, with a constant tension even in moments of relaxation... the war had become a relentless exercise in mechanised killing with operational crews knowing that the chances of them living to complete a full tour of 30 operations was one in four at best, but they just got on with it. far better than "The Dam Busters".