The Way to the Stars (1945)
Directed by Anthony Asquith

Plot Summary: Life on a British bomber base in West Yorkshire, and the surrounding towns, from the opening days of the Battle of Britain to the arrival of the Americans, who join in the bomber offensive.

The film is told in flashback and is set between 1940 and 1944. It opens with a remarkable tracking shot. A camera's eye prowls through a long-abandoned and derelict airfield. It peers in at every hut. Looks at things lying on the floor. It's curious, but silent … then the soundtrack starts to fill with voices and the sound of aeroplanes. This approach was later emulated in the Hollywood film about American bombing raids over Germany, Twelve O'Clock High, made four years later.

The Way to the Stars, more than any other film, sets out to create the feeling of how life was on a bomber station in Britain during World War 2. It's a mixture of life and, even if post-war playwrights rubbished Terence Rattigan (who wrote the story), he knew how to capture language perfectly. Americans try to understand the British. The British try to convince Americans that cricket is superior to baseball, but make the mistake of starting with the Rules. . and so on. Wives and girl-friends live nearby at a genteel guesthouse and try not to look at each other as the bombers return ...or don't. Even though people are dying violently - mostly off-screen - it's all about relationships. Rather dated today, perhaps, and the clipped accents of the British officers sometimes sound like a Noel Coward parody. "The Way to the Stars" comes from the RAF coat of arms "Per ardua ad astra". The American title, "Johnny in the Clouds", comes from a poem written by John Pudney, spoken on the sound-track and dedicated to the fliers who perhaps dreamed about the future they were fighting for but would never personally enjoy: "Johnny Head-in-clouds". The poem is a parody on one written by Heinrich Hoffman, the title translating to `The Story of Johnny Head-In-Air' [1844].

For Johnny: Do not despair for Johnny head-in-air; he sleeps as sound as Johnny underground. Fetch out no shroud for Johnny-in-the-cloud; and keep your tears for him in after years. Better by far for Johnny-the-bright-star, to keep your head and see his children fed. [John Purdey (RAF 1941-1945)]

My Physics teacher, an ex-Spitfire Pilot, use to say there were two films which recreated WWII for him with almost uncanny realism. "Journey Together" was one & "The Way to the Stars" the other, and Halliwell's description confirms it. It's release on DVD is long, long overdue.

Unlike many of the films about the air war, this one never leaves the ground. It opens with a magnificent tracking shot, almost as long as Robert Altman's opening shot in The Player, as a casual voiceover takes the viewer into the airbase and homes in on the wall next to the phone in the barracks, which has a series of marks and pictures on it, apparently insignificant but all turn out to have highly emotive connections to pivotal events in the plot.

It catches the sustained mood of hope and fear, punctuated by moments of terror, hilarity, panic and relief. But these are moments. The unique thing in The Way to the Stars is the sense that everyday life had to be preserved by continuing to live it.

The Rattigan script is wonderful, as is the direction. The long pause before John Mills has to tell hotel manageress Toddy that her husband has been killed, with no background music or noise to break the almost unbearable tension, is one of the most painful in cinema history. Twenty minutes later we're dealt another shocking, but equally understated emotional blow. The wisecracking, cynical New York bomb-aimer fills in the entertainment at a children's party, replacing his captain, killed that morning, having sacrificed himself to avoid injuring the local civilians.

The soldierly respect and comradeship which rapidly replaces grating competitiveness as the Americans arrive on the base is also realistic (and refreshing given Hollywood's tendency to write the British out of WWII as in U-571 or Saving Private Ryan, or worse, portray them dazed and confused as in Band of Brothers.)

Elegiac, heroic, understated, brilliantly filmed, acted and directed, without actually showing any real combat, The Way to the Stars manages to be one of the greatest war films ever made.

Trivia for The Way to the Stars:

• The films title "The Way to the Stars" is a translation of the Latin inscription on the RAF coat of arms "Per ardua ad astra".

• This film is a goldmine for aviation historians as it features lesser known aircraft used at the beginning of the war such as the Avro Anson & Bristol Blenheim (sometimes referred to as the forgotten bomber) as well as American made Douglas A-20 C' Havoc's in RAF service.

• Look out for the scene near the beginning of the film showing a squadron of Blenheim's over flying the nearby town of Shipley on their way to bomb a concentration of German barges across the Channel in Calais.

• The Way To The Stars, an original screenplay by Terrence Rattigan (from a story by him and the film's producer Anatole de Grunwald), takes place between 1940 and 1944.

• One third of a million British men & women were killed during WWII & this film hit a nerve with British audiences at the time, making "The Way to the Stars" the most popular film of 1945.

• The Way to the Stars was released in the States under the title "Johnny in the Clouds" with a running time of 87 minutes. The full length British version ran for 109 minutes.

• The playwright and author Terence Rattigan, who had come across the station whilst he was attached to the RAF during the war, based his script for the film ‘The Way to The Stars’ (known in the USA as ‘Johnny in the Clouds’) on entirely fictitious events at Halfpenny Green airfield Worcestershire, now Staffordshire, 7 miles West of Wolverhampton, which in the film he called ‘Halfpenny Field.’ Originally the intention was to shoot some of the externals at Halfpenny Green airfield but when Two Cities began to make the film in 1945 the station was still operational, so nearby Wolverhampton Municipal Airport (then at Pendeford to the north of the town, today covered by a housing estate) was used instead. In the latter half of the film ‘Halfpenny Field’ is an operational station for both British aircraft & American B-17 s, an impossibility for the real Halfpenny Green because the runways were too short. If squadron markings on the Flying Fortresses are any indication it would seem that the film footage of planes taking off and landing, apparently shot during April and May 1945, was made at the 348 BG base at Grafton-Underwood, in Northamptonshire, which was an actual combat unit at the time.

• With the end of the war in Europe Halfpenny Green’s role as a beam-landing training school came to an end and on a cold grey afternoon in December 1945 the last Bedford five-ton lorry rumbled out of the gates. No. 3 (Observer) Advanced Flying Unit was officially disbanded on December 11th.

Squadron Leader Sil Carter: "Well chaps, you don't need me to tell you, the target's the same as yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that."--Briefing to the men on the day's mission.

Back