The First of the Few (1942) on Netflix
Approved19421h 58mAdventureBiographyDramaWar
In the Battle of Britain, Squadron Leader Geoffrey Crisp tells his pilots how his friend R. J. Mitchell designed their Spitfire. The story starts at the Schneider Trophy races.
- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb7.0/102,396 votes
- Rotten TomatoesNot available
Trailer
Plot summary
In the summer of 1940, with Britain under aerial attack, RAF Squadron Leader Geoffrey Crisp commands a Spitfire squadron. While his pilots wait, he tells them about his friend R. J. Mitchell, the man who designed their aircraft. Crisp begins with the 1922 Schneider Trophy, where Mitchell was already designing high-speed planes. Watching seagulls through binoculars, Mitchell pictured a new shape for aircraft. Crisp, an out-of-work former wartime pilot, impressed Mitchell with his enthusiasm, and Mitchell promised him a job as test pilot should his design ever be built. Mitchell takes his design to Supermarine, where Mr. Higgins hesitates to back an unproven aircraft.
Cast
- Rosalyn Boulteras Mabel Lovesay
- Herbert Cameronas MacPherson
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The First of the Few (1942)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Leslie Howard's production got David Niven only because U.S. producer Samuel Goldwyn traded his release in exchange for the American rights; after seeing the prints, Goldwyn was furious that Niven had a secondary role and personally cut 40 minutes before reissuing it as Spitfire.
SPOILER
R. J. Mitchell's fatal illness is deliberately never named in the film, which implies that rest could have saved or prolonged his life. In reality the Spitfire designer had bowel or rectal cancer, fought it for four years, and underwent a colostomy in 1933.- Leslie Howard looked nothing like Spitfire designer R. J. Mitchell, a large, athletic, working-class man with an explosive temper; apprentices were told to watch the color of his neck and run if it turned red.
- David Niven's RAF officer Geoffrey Crisp was invented for the film, an amalgam of two real Vickers test pilots, Jeffrey Quill and "Mutt" Summers, created to give the story narrative coherence, a narrator and comic relief.
- Composer William Walton later turned major cues from his score for The First of the Few into a concert work, the Spitfire Prelude and Fugue.
