Battle of Britain (found original William Walton score of war film; 1969)

Movie poster.

Status: Found

Date found: 1990

Found by: Unknown

Battle of Britain is a 1969 film detailing the events of the actual Battle of Britain during the summer and fall of 1940, which was a big air battle between the Germans and the United Kingdom. It was directed by Guy Hamilton and proved to be an accurate account of the event, in which the British RAF strategically defeated the German Luftwaffe, subsequently cancelling Adolf Hitler's plan to evade Britain, entitled Operation Sea Lion. Unlike the model work on 1952's Angels One Five, Battle of Britain had spectacular flying sequences not seen on film before then.

The film actually had two musical scores. The first one was the original William Walton score, the opening march of which a journalist described as "a grand patriotic tune to out-type and out-glory any that Sir William has yet written, whether for films or coronations". Yet despite the Walton score containing that and other bombasticness, MGM executives abandoned his score in favor of the Ron Goodwin score, leaving the Walton score believed to be lost forever until tapes of it were found in the sound mixer's garage in 1990, thus ensuring a restoration for a CD release. There also exists an option to watch Battle of Britain with the full Walton score integrated into the movie on the 2004 Region 2 Special Edition DVD.