A few nights ago in our local pub, we discussed the new film Dunkirk and one older man who had been to see it said that it was good – but not as good as the original. A couple of us couldn’t think of a previous film about Dunkirk except for the ones such as Mrs Miniver which had parts of it concerned with the event but we couldn’t remember a so called ‘original’ film of Dunkirk – so we both concluded that he was mistaken.
I later looked on the imdb site – and found that he had been quite correct – and in fact came across the 1958 film Dunkirk starring John Mills, Richard Attenborough and Bernard Miles among many other well known faces. Not only that but quite a few of the reviewers who had seen both films concluded that in fact the 1958 film was the better of the two versions.
Now I am on a mission to acquire and see the older film. It was directed by Barry Norman’s Dad the Director Leslie Norman and much of it was filmed around Rye Harbour in Sussex and Camber Sands nearby. 
Leslie Norman recalls ‘Dunkirk was bloody difficult to make from a logistics point of view. Yet it was made for ₤400,000 and came in under budget’ 
One Reviewer posted this – an extract from it here :-
Dunkirk is one of the best war movies I have ever seen. It was nice to see Sir John Mills in one of his best if not – THE best roles he ever was in. The makers of this fine film did a most excellent job in portraying as accurately as possible; the terrible events that made up Dunkirk.
The cast was excellent
Above: John Mills and Bernard Lee being filmed here with the travelling camera.
Above: Admin work on he set OR maybe a scene from the film
It appears that the camera – Above – is adapted for filming close to the water
Above: John Mills reads the script
