The name is absent

Appendix 3.2: Seunple films - synopses and character lists
THE DAM BUSTERS UK 55

Coney Island beach guard.
You musn't forget the English.

Thus the contribution of the rest of the Anglo Saxon world
community is acknowledged but in terms of the whole film it is
marginalised just as much as women are. Finally the
exclusively middle class style, taste and habits of the major
protagonists must be noted. The middle class reigns supreme
in this film aided by the immaculate class hierarchy
maintained within the RAF: what is interesting is that the
relatively few other locations - the Whitehall corridors and
offices, and the various experimental stations where Wallis is
shown developing and perfecting his idea - are offered as
places in which a similarly hierarchical social order obtains.
This pervasiveness of assumptions about class, gender and
nationality is somewhat paradoxical given the film's thesis
concerning merit and innate ability.

The film is also paradoxical in its construction of the
character Barnes Wallis, the most complex and interesting of
the characters, whose unworldliness and naivete is repeatedly
emphasised: it is almost suggested to be a consequence of his
exceptional brilliance and perseverance. The audience is
invited, in various key scenes, to be alternately sympathetic
to and dismissive of his apparently simplistic approach to the
problems inherent in translating pure research into practical
advantage.

Female characters in order of appearance, character groups

Male characters in order of appearance, character groups

219

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