Fire Over England

Lavish Korda production designed partly as a coronation year spectacular, partly as a call to arms against the Nazi threat. The script is the usual historico-romantico bunk, tricked out with some literary frills and providing some mild swashbuckling for Olivier, playing a young man seeking revenge for his father's death at the hands of the Spanish Inquisition, and simultaneously serving Queen and Country by obtaining advance news of the Armada. Directed stylishly enough, but it gets by mainly on the handsome sets, superb camerawork (Wong Howe), and some sterling performances (notably Robson's pawky Queen Elizabeth and Massey as the villainous Philip of Spain). Pity the climactic burning of the Armada is so obviously tank-bound.