An exciting, touching, and funny movie, one of Hawks' best.
It's a richly textured work, with several sub-narratives weaved into one another.
The most important is the voyage of the new B-17, the "Mary Ann", from California to Honolulu to Wake Island to Clark Field in the Phillipines. Movies about journeys can be exciting, if they're well done, as this one is. There is the change of scenery, the dramas large and small at the stopovers, and above all the living that goes on within the vehicle. There is a lot of model work involved, out of necessity, but it has a reassuring cartoonish quality. I loved those wooden miniature airplanes taking off without lifting their noses, as if levitating rather than flying. And the tiny papier-mache palms, and the fake studio jungles. Within the limits of the available technology, it's pretty well done. As the model B-17 taxis its way across the tarmac, we can even hear the squealing of its brakes as the pilot applies them.
The voyage is fascinating not just because we are following the Mary Ann, but because we get to know what it's like to live inside the fuselage, to fly and defend the airplane, to work on its engines and to feed it gasoline by using a bucket brigade. Most of all we get to know the tiny social system of the men and how they are knitted together by circumstances into a solidary group.
This is true Hawks territory. Here we have John Garfield as the cynical flight-school washout Winocki. (Cf., Christopher Walken's monologue in "Pulp Fiction.") Garfield sneers at the others and hates the skipper, the good-natured, efficient, and highly respected James Ridgely as "Irish" Quincannon. Ridgely tries to explain to Garfield that it doesn't matter what any single person's feelings are. We are all part of a team here; each of us depends on the other; we support and help one another; we'd give each other our last pair of socks; in fact, two of the crew are married to each other. (Well -- not that.)
Garfield is finally won over after the attack on Pearl Harbor. (Kids, that was the beginning of World War II for us. PS: We won.) The way the crew learns the news is just plain fine. What craftsmanship. The radioman is sitting at his console and loses contact with Honolulu before picking up some gunshots and Japanese chatter. It's a sign of the care that was taken in this film that we get to appreciate the job that the RADIOMAN is doing! In almost every other film involving a bombers we get to know only the pilots and the gunners -- sometimes the bombardier. But in this case we get to see the kind of job everyone does, including the crew chief, and, in a suspenseful miniepisode, the navigator. The NAVIGATOR! Usually if he's included at all, it's only to get his head blown off.
Hawks is fond of the gradual integration of an outsider into the group, the willing penetration of social borders. Sometimes it's a "girl," as in, "Only Angels Have Wings." (When Jean Arthur sits down to play the guys' piano, Cary Grant advises her, "You'd better be good.") Here it's Garfield, who begins by hating the Air Corps and ends by being a fully functioning team member, and an innovative leader. If that's not enough, we have yet another playful rivalry between the Mary Ann's crew and a passenger they pick up -- a pursuit pilot who jokes about the furniture vans that bomber crews have to fly around in. Does he turn into a fully functioning team member at the end too? Yes, he does, although as far as we know he's had to multi-engine time at all. No matter.
The essence of Hawks' fascination with male solidarity is probably best expressed in the scene in which the Mary Ann is being attacked over a (fictional) Japanese fleet. As a Zero homes in on the B-17 from a given position, the gunner on that side yells out to the captain, "Swing her a little to the left!", and Ridgely makes the airplane yaw slightly to give the gunner a better shot at the Zero. Let me put this another way -- an enlisted gunner is telling the captain of the airplane what to do. And the officer happily complies. That is teamwork. The crew transcend their individuality. They're like a single organism.
"Irish" dies towards the end in a scene that could have been so much cornier than it is. (Faulkner is said to have written part of it.) Everyone of importance is in the death scene and plays a part.
The movie practically falls apart at the end, unfortunately. Our airplanes seem to blow the entire Imperial Japanese Navy out of the water in a battle that resembles nothing of historical value. And yet even the final scene, of the Mary Ann crash landing in the rolling surf, is exciting enough to help us forget the obvious propaganda of the previous scene. The problem, though, is that the racism runs all the way through the film. Okay, let's accept dialog like, "Fried Jap going' down!", when a Zero explodes. But the Japanese in Hawaii are treated as treacherous cowards, which, by the time of this movie's release, should have been a myth long dispelled. Of course there was never any sabotage. They were American citizens before they were Japanese.
Anyway, an outstanding adventure movie. Nothing arty or pretentious, simply a nicely executed work. One of the best films to be made during the war.
It's a richly textured work, with several sub-narratives weaved into one another.
The most important is the voyage of the new B-17, the "Mary Ann", from California to Honolulu to Wake Island to Clark Field in the Phillipines. Movies about journeys can be exciting, if they're well done, as this one is. There is the change of scenery, the dramas large and small at the stopovers, and above all the living that goes on within the vehicle. There is a lot of model work involved, out of necessity, but it has a reassuring cartoonish quality. I loved those wooden miniature airplanes taking off without lifting their noses, as if levitating rather than flying. And the tiny papier-mache palms, and the fake studio jungles. Within the limits of the available technology, it's pretty well done. As the model B-17 taxis its way across the tarmac, we can even hear the squealing of its brakes as the pilot applies them.
The voyage is fascinating not just because we are following the Mary Ann, but because we get to know what it's like to live inside the fuselage, to fly and defend the airplane, to work on its engines and to feed it gasoline by using a bucket brigade. Most of all we get to know the tiny social system of the men and how they are knitted together by circumstances into a solidary group.
This is true Hawks territory. Here we have John Garfield as the cynical flight-school washout Winocki. (Cf., Christopher Walken's monologue in "Pulp Fiction.") Garfield sneers at the others and hates the skipper, the good-natured, efficient, and highly respected James Ridgely as "Irish" Quincannon. Ridgely tries to explain to Garfield that it doesn't matter what any single person's feelings are. We are all part of a team here; each of us depends on the other; we support and help one another; we'd give each other our last pair of socks; in fact, two of the crew are married to each other. (Well -- not that.)
Garfield is finally won over after the attack on Pearl Harbor. (Kids, that was the beginning of World War II for us. PS: We won.) The way the crew learns the news is just plain fine. What craftsmanship. The radioman is sitting at his console and loses contact with Honolulu before picking up some gunshots and Japanese chatter. It's a sign of the care that was taken in this film that we get to appreciate the job that the RADIOMAN is doing! In almost every other film involving a bombers we get to know only the pilots and the gunners -- sometimes the bombardier. But in this case we get to see the kind of job everyone does, including the crew chief, and, in a suspenseful miniepisode, the navigator. The NAVIGATOR! Usually if he's included at all, it's only to get his head blown off.
Hawks is fond of the gradual integration of an outsider into the group, the willing penetration of social borders. Sometimes it's a "girl," as in, "Only Angels Have Wings." (When Jean Arthur sits down to play the guys' piano, Cary Grant advises her, "You'd better be good.") Here it's Garfield, who begins by hating the Air Corps and ends by being a fully functioning team member, and an innovative leader. If that's not enough, we have yet another playful rivalry between the Mary Ann's crew and a passenger they pick up -- a pursuit pilot who jokes about the furniture vans that bomber crews have to fly around in. Does he turn into a fully functioning team member at the end too? Yes, he does, although as far as we know he's had to multi-engine time at all. No matter.
The essence of Hawks' fascination with male solidarity is probably best expressed in the scene in which the Mary Ann is being attacked over a (fictional) Japanese fleet. As a Zero homes in on the B-17 from a given position, the gunner on that side yells out to the captain, "Swing her a little to the left!", and Ridgely makes the airplane yaw slightly to give the gunner a better shot at the Zero. Let me put this another way -- an enlisted gunner is telling the captain of the airplane what to do. And the officer happily complies. That is teamwork. The crew transcend their individuality. They're like a single organism.
"Irish" dies towards the end in a scene that could have been so much cornier than it is. (Faulkner is said to have written part of it.) Everyone of importance is in the death scene and plays a part.
The movie practically falls apart at the end, unfortunately. Our airplanes seem to blow the entire Imperial Japanese Navy out of the water in a battle that resembles nothing of historical value. And yet even the final scene, of the Mary Ann crash landing in the rolling surf, is exciting enough to help us forget the obvious propaganda of the previous scene. The problem, though, is that the racism runs all the way through the film. Okay, let's accept dialog like, "Fried Jap going' down!", when a Zero explodes. But the Japanese in Hawaii are treated as treacherous cowards, which, by the time of this movie's release, should have been a myth long dispelled. Of course there was never any sabotage. They were American citizens before they were Japanese.
Anyway, an outstanding adventure movie. Nothing arty or pretentious, simply a nicely executed work. One of the best films to be made during the war.