If you want a good history lesson, I would advise you to ignore this documentary. This is because it was hastily thrown together and abounds with half-truths, outright lies and oversimplifications. And, considering all the good documentaries about WWII, you'd be better off looking for one of them!

"The Lion Has Wings" was indeed hastily tossed together at the beginning of WWII. For the most part, it consists of stock footage, heavy-handed narration and a bit of new footage. It DID succeed in selling a lot of tickets and helped get the British public behind the war effort--so it was effective propaganda.

One of the main problems I had with the film was how they talked about how evil the Nazis were in wanting to dominate the world and how they were anti-freedom. This seemed funny coming from the largest empire in the world in 1939...the British empire! The British had, over the previous 200-300 years done exactly this! It simply ignored history. Now I am NOT saying the British empire and Nazi empires were identical....but neither was exactly pro-freedom.

But the problem wasn't just this. Too often, the narration is just bad....and illogical. It was at its best when it showed a chronology of Hitler's speeches where he SAID he was for peace...and his actions and words in "Mein Kampf" said otherwise. But often it sounded more like name calling and hyperbole...and the film is not good as a documentary but as a window into the soul of Britain in 1939 and its way to presenting the war to its people.

I really wasn't expecting to see a documentary when I saw the names Merle Oberon and Ralph Richardson, but a documentary it was. "The Lion Has Wings" is a propaganda film produced by Alexander Korda, showing the world as the Nazis begin to take over Europe.

If you know about England at this time in history, and I do, you perhaps won't be as interested in this as others.

The British really wanted to fight, but they were afraid that America wouldn't join them, and they really didn't know how they could stave off the Germans without the U.S.

Whether they could withstand the Germans or not, the Brits wanted to show that they were ready to fight.

Some interesting actual footage. Oberon and Richardson were just there to get people into the theaters. This is pretty dry stuff, although back then, a film of this type was important for morale.

During its initial release, Britain has gone to war but it's still a few months before Dunkirk. This is a British propaganda film explaining the cause of WWII. This is a presentation of Britain's casus belli. Britain is a peaceful country while the militant Germans impose their will upon Europe. I can do without the actors and the war machinery at the beginning is mostly obsolete. They do get into the factories to see the manufacturing and that's pretty interesting. The war action is a mix of real footage and recreations but is mostly fine. It tries to tie in the ongoing war with historical conflict and that's not necessary. The propagandists are probably throwing everything including the kitchen sink at this thing. Quite frankly, it's too long by half. This needs to be a patriotic thirty to forty five minutes. They need to get people in and get them out riled up. This is a little long and probably leaves its audience a little tired.