The Way to the Stars **** (1945, John Mills, Michael Redgrave, Trevor Howard) – Classic Movie Review 1337

Director Anthony Asquith’s stirring 1945 wartime salute to the Royal Air Force concentrates on the personal relationships of a group of men stationed on a World War Two British bomber airfield.

In the star department, there are splendid stiff upper lips on show from John Mills as Pilot Officer Peter Penrose, Michael Redgrave as Flight Lieutenant David Archdale and Trevor Howard (in his second but first credited film role) as Squadron Leader Carter. Penrose is posted in the summer of 1940 as a green Bristol Blenheim pilot to the fictional No. 720 Squadron at a new airfield, RAF Station Halfpenny Field, under Archdale.

In the star character actor department, there’s entertaining comic relief from Joyce Carey as Miss Winterton and Stanley Holloway as Mr Palmer (both actors also appear with Trevor Howard in Brief Encounter). And young Jean Simmons in her debut pops in as a singer to sing ‘Let Him Go, Let Him Tarry’. It is a memorable, vintage British cast, but Americans Douglass Montgomery and Bonar Colleano (in his film debut at the age of 20) also appear as USAAF Captain Johnny Hollis and Lieutenant Joe Friselli, no doubt to try to boost sales overseas.

Playwright Terence Rattigan provides a literate, intelligent, though rather poetically, fancifully up-in-the-clouds screenplay, based on his own stage play and using poems by John Pudney, and for many this will bring on the real true flavour of World War Two. Rattigan bases it on his 1942 play Flare Path, which involves his own RAF experiences as a flight lieutenant, but he reworks the material significantly.

The film also stars Rosamund John, Basil Radford, Renée Asherson, Felix Aylmer, Anthony Dawson, Tryon Nichol, Grant Miller, Johnnie Schofield, Charles Victor, David Tomlinson and Bill Owen, who was then billed as Rowbotham.

The poetry, supposedly written by Archdale, was by John Pudney, one of two poems written specifically for the film. It is found on a piece of paper and given by Penrose to Toddy (Rosamund John).

In 1946 readers of the Daily Mail voted it their most favourite British film of 1939–45, beating The Man in Grey.

The title The Way to the Stars is taken from the RAF’s Latin motto Per ardua ad astra. The American release title, Johnny in the Clouds, is derived from the poem recited in the film as tribute to a dead American aviator. Though the film was popular in Britain, it performed weakly in America.

London-born Renée Asherson (aka Dorothy Renée Ascherson) died on October 30 2014 at the grand old age of 99. She was last seen on the big screen in Richard Attenborough’s Grey Owl (1999) and in Alejandro Amenábar’s supernatural drama The Others (2001), starring Nicole Kidman.

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(C) Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1337

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