Editorial

As Russian forces launched their attack on Ukraine in February 2022, which had a sad inevitability after weeks of ‘sabre-rattling’ from the Kremlin – an accusation former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder levelled at Kyiv – a continent slowly emerging from the ravages of the coronavirus pandemic braced itself for more uncertainty. The images of refugees fleeing the country were heartbreaking to see yet again; social media platforms now mean such pictures of distress are so much more prevalent than ever. Equally striking though was the number of Ukrainian civilians who vowed to stay and take up arms against the invading forces. It was in that context that the film Hurricane: 303 Squadron (Blair, 2018) struck a chord. Based on the squadron formed of exiled Polish fighter pilots who had fled their homeland after the Nazi invasion in September 1939, the film eulogises the bravery of the men, pilots and ground crew who made such a vital contribution to the eventual victory in the Battle of Britain. Indeed, 303 Squadron was reputed to have shot down more enemy aircraft than any other during the Battle, with the one Czech in the squadron, Flight Sergeant Josef Frantisek, the leading ace in terms of confirmed kills. As Commander-in-Chief of Fighter Command, Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, would later observe: ‘Had it not been for the magnificent material contributed by the Polish squadrons and their unsurpassed gallantry, I hesitate to say that the outcome of the Battle would have been the same’ (Polish Embassy UK 2020). Leslie Felperin’s review in The Guardian is a little dismissive of the way the film can be set alongside so many other rather melodramatic or formulaic World War Two dramas, containing ‘the required guns blazing and handsome chaps being heroic, stoic and panicstriken’ (2018). He therefore compares it rather unfavourably to Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk from the previous year, though he acknowledges that Blair had a much smaller budget at his disposal and actually manages to orchestrate affairs relatively well overall. In truth, the inclusion of the love story between protagonist Jan Zumbach, convincingly played by Welsh actor Iwan Rheon, fresh from success in Game of Thrones, and Phyllis Lambert (Stefanie Martini), does evoke memories of Jan Svērák’s Dark Blue World (2001), with its comparable story of exiled Czech pilots fleeing to Britain to carry the fight to the Germans. But no matter that the film might betray the usual instances of truelife history being adapted for the screen with the creative flourishes that can antagonise historians, Hurricane has perhaps belatedly acquired additional significance in the wake of the Ukrainian crisis. What is particularly unsettling, in view of the British Government’s reluctance to issue visas for refugees from the conflict, is the film’s poignant conclusion at the end of the war with the surviving pilots toasting their fallen comrades before being expelled from Britain, irrespective of their significant achievements in defending the isle. Plus ça change . . . STUDIES IN EUROPEAN CINEMA 2022, VOL. 19, NO. 1, 1–3 https://doi.org/10.1080/17411548.2022.2049501