Sir Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk is a modern classic, but did you know there was another British World War 2 film about the evacuation?
Back in 1958, Leslie Norman directed a movie of the same name depicting Operation Dynamo through the experiences of three characters.
This recreation of the 1940 turning point in the conflict saw over 338,000 men successfully escape the French beaches as Hitler’s forces advanced through Nazi-occupied Europe.
Oscar-winners John Mills and Richard Attenborough, alongside James Bond’s M actor Bernard Lee, star in this adaptation based on the novels The Big Pick-Up by Elleston Trevor and Dunkirk by Lt Col Ewan Butler and Major JS Bradford.
Dunkirk would go on to be the third most popular film at the British box office of 1958 after Bridge on the River Kwai and The Vikings.
Shot on location in France and at MGM’s British Studios, the cast included real-life army officers and wartime music hall performers Bud Flanagan and Chesney Allen as themselves.
Director Norman later reflected: “Dunkirk was bloody difficult to make from a logistics point of view. Yet it was made for £400,000 and came in under budget… I was the council schoolboy who became a major in the war, and that had a lot to do with the way I felt about Dunkirk. I didn’t think that Dunkirk was a defeat; I always thought it was a very gallant effort but not a victory.”
Dunkirk (1958) is on BBC Two this Saturday afternoon at 1:20pm and will be streaming on BBC iPlayer for a limited time.
