THE LION HAS WINGS (1939)

With a brief gap between British & Hollywood shoots on his TechniColor remake of THE THIEF OF BAGDAD/’40 (the start of WWII forced the move), producer Alexander Korda contributed to the burgeoning war effort with this patriotic quickie. Half rose-colored documentary/half sentimental family drama (and nearly all hooey), it was designed for maximum uplift, a sunny-sided portrait of a desperate situation. And as such, fairly effective. The first half hour is nearly all documentary, a potted history on how we got where we are. (And not so far from what Frank Capra would turn out Stateside in PRELUDE TO WAR/’42, first in the WHY WE FIGHT series.) After that, the film mixes in more fictional story as Korda regulars like Merle Oberon & Ralph Richardson join the war effort. (She’s a nurse; he oversees early bomb runs.) Best now for factory footage showing planes & ammunition still hand-crafted; a ramped up, human-scaled cottage industry fighting a war. Korda adds some production value with a clip of Elizabethan Pageantry from his own FIRE OVER ENGLAND/’37 (with Flora Robson’s Queen Elizabeth firing up her subjects*), then gives Oberon a similar ‘there’ll-always-be-an-England’ speech for Richardson to fall asleep to. Nice touch.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Even with Robson, Vivien Leigh, Laurence Olivier and the Spanish Armada, FIRE OVER ENGLAND doesn’t get the attention it deserves.