Laurent,
I have asked you before not to drift off-topic
and make some reason to mention the politics of the actors.
The threads are for discussion not a platform for your political views
I'm sure you are aware that Douglas Bader was a very controversial figure in the UK, particularly in the 1960s onwards.
If you let that kind of stuff affect your enjoyment of a movie, your not allowing yourself the pleasure of the story. I watch a film to be entertained, not to pick apart the flaws. Unless they have a 52 year old actor playing a teenager, I never really take notice of such things. I watch a film to be entertained, and most times, I am. Just my opinion
Mark
Fair enough, but it was a bit funny seeing 42-year-old More playing Bader as an 18-year-old cadet.
Bader was a Conservative and a friend of Churchill, which is why Burton turned the film down.
I was reading a book about the New Wave of British films in the late 1950s like Room at the Top and Look Back in Anger. It suggested the success of movies like Reach for the Sky and The Cockleshell Heroes was due to audiences looking back nostalgically on the war years as a time when people knew their place and when the UK seemed like a world power. Of course, 1956 and the Suez Crisis proved this was no longer the case.
I read Richard Burton refused to play Bader for political reasons. He would have been much more suitable age-wise.
Kenneth More was far too old to play Bader.
