Instant film review: Pressure

Just back from watching the film "Pressure" about the decision whether and when to launch the Normandy landings in 1944 and the meteorologists who advised General Eisenhower.

The central characters of the film, which launched in cinemas today, are Group Captain James Stagg, CB, FRSE, who was the Scottish Chief Meteorologist advising the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF,) portrayed by Andrew Scott, and the Commander in Chief, General Dwight D Eisenhower, portrayed by Brendan Fraser.

 

"Pressure" is a drama, not a documentary, and it would probably be more accurate to describe it a a brilliant piece of fiction inspired by real events rather than a true story. But it does capture in a gripping way, some of the challenges which the D-Day commanders and planners faced. Everyone who watches this film already knows that the largest amphibious invasion in history was going to succeed, and on what date.

Those who planned and gave the orders it had no such foreknowledge. Eisenhower in particular bore the terrifying responsibility of being, as Admiral Jellicoe had been described by Churchill in World War One, "The man who could lose the war in an afternoon."

One of the things the film sets out to do, and achieves brilliantly, is to show the human cost that the pressure of responsibility for making the decision about whether and when conditions in the channel and in the skies over Normandy would make an invasion feasible imposed on men like Eisenhower and those who advised him. It would not be an overstatement to say that the fate of the free world rested on their shoulders. One of elements of the film which is entirely accurate is that Eisenhower prepared two communiques, one for if the invasion succeeded, and a second which he would have issued had it failed, accepting that the responsibility for the failure should not be attached to his men but was his alone. 

Without wanting to spoil those parts of the story which the prospective viewer will not already know, it would be fair to say that the debates and disagreements in the film do to a significant extent reflect those which actually went on within SHAEF HQ as the planned invasion date grew near, although the film-makers, and David Haig's 2014 stage play "pressure" on which is is based, did take some significant liberties with real history for dramatic effect.

In the film James Stagg only joins SHAEF as chief meteorologist a few days before D-Day - in real history he took up that position months before, in late 1943.

And where the film portrays the argument about impending weather conditions almost as a gladiatorial combat between US meteorologist Irving Krick and James Stagg, that isn't quite how it happened and the film combines the roles actually played by four men into those two characters. Stagg had did have an American colonel as his deputy who was usually with him to brief Eisenhower, but that deputy was not Irving Krick but Colonel (later General) David Yates, who had a much better working relationship with Stagg than Krick does in the film.

Irving Krick really was working in the US forecasting team, he really did use the methodology he is portrayed as using, and he did come up with the recommendations ascribed to him in the film. He also really had correctly forecast the weather which could be expected for the filming of "Gone With the Wind!"

However, the person initially putting the opposite point of view to Krick in real history was not James Stagg but a Norwegian meterologist, Sverre Petterssen. And Peterssen's real historical role was, perhaps a bit unfairly in my opinion, left out of both the play and the film and subsumed into Stagg's.

James Stagg's role wasn't as he is portrayed in the film, as the lone wolf who was right when everyone else was wrong. His true historical role, which was just as important if rather less dramatic, was as the top meterological expert who had to make the call which of the competing expert opinions was right, and luckily for all of us, he called it correctly and Eisenhower listened to him.

If "Pressure" was supposed to be a documentary, that would be a serious failing but it's not, it is a drama and a very good one.

One little piece of real history which accurately made it into the film, if a bit "blink and you'll miss it" was the weather report from a lighthouse keeper's wife, Maureen Sweeney, who had sent through a key piece of information from Blacksod lighthouse near Belmullet in County Mayo, Ireland. That report was sufficiently vital to the decision of whether and when to launch the D-day landings that Stagg had his staff phone her and check it. In 2021, by which time she was 98 years old, Maureen Sweeney was awarded a special medal from the US congress for that service.

If you are interested in learning a little more about the historians' view of the meteorological decisions leading up to D-Day, I can suggest this article about the accuracy of the film "Pressure” and the YouTube video clip below as good places to start.

But Pressure is an entertaining film and I can heartily recommend it.

Professor X