Re-making the Dam Busters

It takes a brave man to re-make a much-loved classic of the cinema. No matter what their faults and limitations might be, we rarely accept that the new version is anything other than a poor imitation. And even though they may be aimed at a completely new audience, which has never heard of the original, they never seem to work.

Recently we've had The Ladykillers, War of the Worlds and Alfie. No doubt they are all well-made, no doubt they all made money, but will they ever, unlike the originals, be anything more than a footnote in film history?

Is The Maltese Falcon not an exception, some might ask? Not so. It was indeed preceded by two forgettable attempts to film Hammett's novel, but it did not enter cinema's canon until John Huston took on the project and a happy combination of star, support actors, script, camerawork and direction, and what can only be described as zeitgeist, came together at the precise moment to produce a kind of perfection, which it is impossible to recreate.

But Peter Jackson is to produce a new version of The Dam Busters (and call it The Dambusters). Obviously the man does not learn. His recent new take on King Kong had all the advantages of modern cinema, especially CGI, but still failed to deliver the impact of the 1933 original, for all its naivety and clunky special effects.

But to remake The Dam Busters is more than brave. It's foolhardy. Jackson may be a New Zealander, but we'll still be on the watch for American attempts to steal our British glory. A thousand armchair military historians will comb the film for inaccuracies, and it will be compared scene for scene with the earlier film and at best given grudging praise by amateur and professional critics alike.

In Lincolnshire, of course, we feel we own Bomber Command, and to interfere with the myth of the raid is akin to querying some 'fact' about the Alamo with a Texan. I grew up being told to look out for the shot of Lincoln cathedral in the film, and my own children always had RAF Scampton pointed out as we passed it in the car

The 1954 film was very much of its time, and thoroughly British. Understated, proud (in a polite way) and aimed at an audience that had lived through the dark days of a decade before. It was methodical, almost documentary in style and shot in monochrome. I always think of World War II as a war fought in black and white. Spielberg thinks the same way and Saving Private Ryan's colour is so muted it hardly seems to exist. I hear that Clint Eastwood's Flags of our Fathers is similar. This technique was not used in, say, Memphis Belle and I think this is one reason why the film did not work for me, for all it's accuracy and historical detail.

Back to 1954. The film avoid histrionics and sentimentality, but it still stirs deep, powerful emotions in its audience. Michael Redgrave's body language, stiff and awkward, hints at Wallis' fear of failure, his boyish enthusiasm in success and his final rush of guilt. Richard Todd's brisk professionalism hides Gibson's loneliness in command, a post forbidding any real friendship but that of a dog. So often it is a mere detail or simple image that triggers the tears: the brief, silent thought on Gibson's face when a plane is shot down before he orders the next crew to go in; the dead dog's leash lying useless in his in-tray; Wallis rolling up his trouser legs before wading into the sea to retrieve fragments of his shattered bomb.

It's very irritating that so much of the debate about Mr Jackson's project has been over 'Nigger's' name. Personally, I wouldn't change it, because I'm sick of the current climate in Britain, so desperate to be sensitive, so keen to avoid offense. But then again, I wouldn't care too much if it were to be changed. Even the most true-to-life films are full of alterations to history. Characters are amalgamated, events eliminated or simplified. If you want the facts, you find them in documentaries or non-fiction books. Sometimes it takes fiction to show the truth.

I would not alter one scene of the original film, which is a masterpiece - I use that word in its strict sense - a thoroughly professional work about a thoroughly professional operation. But there's no denying its historical inaccuracies. I am not talking about dogs' names, or who had the idea of setting lights under the fuselage to estimate height, or whether the bombs were spherical or cylindrical. Nor even about the rather unpleasant nature of Gibson's character. The real question is over the success or otherwise of the raid itself.

Although the film ends on a poignant, melancholy note, it gives the impression that the raid was successful. Unfortunately it wasn't - maybe it wasn't. The results were well below what had been expected. Only two of the three target dams were breached. Water production was restored within six weeks. Other sources of power were found and the dams were repaired within eleven weeks. One thousand civilian Germans were killed, along with many Ukrainian POWs and slave workers. Not to mention our own terrible losses - eight planes lost out of nineteen, 53 men dead, 3 captured, out of 113.

Only in hindsight can consolation be found. It was obviously great propaganda and, no doubt, boosted morale - I always find that concept patronising. The enemy diverted precious manpower to guarding the dams, etc. (But they still had enough left to take over Italy when Mussolini fell).

As I said before, facts are facts and truth is truth. The truth here is, as always, in man, in humankind, the answer to the sphinx's riddle. The film is about victory, moral, Pyrrhic, but victory. That potent mix of brains, leadership, discipline, self-sacrifice and raw, stupid courage.

It ain't like it used to be, but it'll do.