The film is admirable in every aspect. It is almost documentary in its realism, although everything is faked, and yet it succeeds in giving a totally convincing picture of this tremendous plight of fighting the war by fighting its fires at the peril of everyone's life. These men are not called fire soldiers for nothing. Accentuating the value of the realism of the film is a number of prominent actors appearing as quite ordinary men in the fire brigade, like James Mason, Finlay Currie, William Hartnell, Mervyn Johns and even the comedian Tommy Trinder. It's amazing how this film was done. It was all made in studios, and yet the fire couldn't have been made more burning. Of course, much of it must have been collected out of actual footage of those days, you don't burn a city down to make a movie, and adding to the impact of the film is its almost architectural structure. The Blitz and its horrendous inferno of burning death doesn't start until half of the film has passed, all is just preparations before then, after which it is all serious business indeed. At the same time, there is plenty of good humour, many human aspects as women also play a significant part in the complex documentary of human lives under the Blitz, and still this was only the beginning. As Churchill said after the battle of Britain had been won, this was only the end of the beginning.