7: The Dambusters (1955)

7: The Dambusters (1954) - Destruction of the Ruhr dam.
Michael Anderson's rousing tale of backroom boffins and chirpy class collaboration amongst the English bombers was a huge hit in Britain. The country still visibly and psychologically scarred by bombing campaigns was happy to relive some of WWII's scientific glory in the context of a 'happy ending'. Revisionism means that we can't easily view the film the same way without making an effort to adjust to the mind-set of the period, but in that context the cheer moments are clear, such as the moment that the Ruhr dam finally 'goes' under the onslaught from Michael Redgrave's 'bouncing bombs'. Water effects were very hard to achieve convincingly before the age of CGI, and the damn breaches were accomplished mostly by using the silhouette of explosions as mattes for fomenting sea-water. The need to keep motion in the shots was an additional challenge in terms of verisimilitude.

Impact: The royal command performance of The Dambusters caused so much interest as to require a repeat the following night. There's no denying the sheer spectacle and bravery depicted in the film, and many of its shots stood in for unfinished SFX footage in early cuts of Star Wars. But it's only by watching the preliminary years of effort and frustration to get the bouncing bombs going that one can see the sheer emotional impact of the Ruhr breach. From a science-experiment in Barnes-Wallace's garden to the deaf ears of Whitehall and the eventual interest of 'Bomber' Harris and a series of disastrous tests, the build-up to the breach only adds to the characters' elation in that moment.

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